This is the one that went. Left sandal, brown, the buckled sort, strap worn through at one hole, on the edging stones by the water on the canal path at Milnsbridge. Documented the 8th of August — photographed, measured, noted, all in order, weather fair. A sound entry and no reason at the time to think owt more of it.
I went back a fortnight on, as I sometimes do with the canal ones, and it were gone. Nothing on the edging stones, nothing in the water that I could see, nothing along the path either way. I noted the return visit with the same care as the find: date, weather (fair again), and the one word, 'gone'.
First one lost since the Meltham brogue, and folk sometimes think a lost shoe should trouble me more than it does. It doesn't. Shoes go — they went somewhere before I found them and some of them go somewhere after, and neither end of that is my business. What matters is the register, and in the register it's marked lost and it keeps its number. They always keep their number, else the register means nothing. Number 193 is the Milnsbridge sandal whether the sandal exists or not. That's not sentiment. That's record-keeping.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.