Blackmoorfoot again, and I'll say now what the notebook said then: Blackmoorfoot rarely lets me down and I don't say that lightly. Right trainer, white gone to grey, laces tied in a double knot, on the conduit path — the level stretch that runs toward Deer Hill. A double knot is worth recording. Most laces I find are single-tied, untied, or gone. Somebody had tied them shoes to stay tied.
The wind were coming across the water hard enough to trouble the flask cup, so I had me tea in the lee of the wall, which is all in the notebook, along with the sandwich, which were egg and cress. February on the conduit path is honest weather. You know where you stand with it, which is usually leaning slightly.
The trainer had been there a while by the state of the sole. Three photographs, two came out, the third lost to the wind shaking the camera, I expect, though the notebook just says it didn't come out and I'll not dress that up. What I remember, though it's memory and not the record, is walking back along the conduit with the wind behind me and thinking it were shaping up to be a decent year. It were the fifth of February and I'd had three already. I couldn't have told you then it would finish at thirty-one, and if I had told you, I'd not have believed me. But a man gets a sense for these things on the conduit path, or thinks he does, which comes to the same on the day.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.