This one were in water, which changes the job. Right plimsoll, white or had been, wedged against a stone in the beck at Magdale with the water going over it, laces trailing downstream. I noted it from the bank. You can't interfere, and as I put it in the notebook, I weren't getting in the beck regardless. Both things are true and either would have done on its own.
First proper warm day of that year, the notebook says, and egg and cress in the foil. What it also says, which I'd forgotten until I read it back, is that the photograph came out with the light on the water in it. I've dug the photograph out and it has, an' all. It's more than I usually manage. I'd like to claim I planned it, but the notebook makes no such claim and neither will I.
A shoe in moving water is a different sort of entry — you're noting summat that's mid-journey rather than settled — but it goes in the register the same as owt else. Left or right, colour, condition, position, weather. The beck were doing the moving. I were doing the noting. That's the division of labour and it's served.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.