Butterley spillway is a grand bit of stonework — I said so in the notebook at the time and I'll say it again now. Where the boot comes into it: left, tan, the work sort, steel toe by the look of it, lace snapped off short, sat on the spillway wall at Butterley Reservoir above Marsden. Warm and hazy, mid-July.
The notebook says the boot suited the spillway, and it did. A working boot on working stonework. That's as near as I get to putting two and two together, and I'll go no further, because how it got there isn't my department.
I sat a while on the stool with a Penguin, which is all down in the entry, flask included. The photograph came out a bit grainy. The camera does that and I've never bothered to fix it — they suit the subject, the grainy ones, and a tan boot in July haze arguably wants a bit of grain. I remember the spillway being a good sitting spot, though whether I'd remember that without the notebook prompting me I couldn't honestly say. That's the thing about transcribing fifteen years of notebooks. You can't always tell which memories are yours and which are the notebook's. Where they differ, I trust the notebook's.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.