A Saturday, and Beaumont Park on a Saturday in June is busy, which mattered to this one. Child's trainer, right, red with a white stripe, hook-and-loop straps rather than laces, sat on the steps below the bandstand. Good condition — hardly a mark on it, the notebook says.
There were families about, and a little lad watched me photograph it and asked what I were doing. I told him. I document lone shoes. He nodded and went off, which the notebook records in full: 'He nodded and went off.' I've thought about that exchange more than once since. He took it as reasonable, which it is, and children generally do. It's grown folk who want the explaining.
Sunny spells. I had the flask on a bench after, in among the Saturday crowd, and nobody asked me owt else. Whether the trainer were claimed later I couldn't say — a park shoe stands a better chance of being claimed than a moor shoe, that's just arithmetic — but I didn't go back to check and the register doesn't require it. Documented as found. Number 191, and one of two children's shoes that year, the other being the Golcar school shoe back in March.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.