Red. Most of what I find is black, white or brown — I keep a rough tally at the back of each notebook and the proportions barely move year to year — so a red trainer earns its moment. Right trainer, red, laces tied, on the track out of Holme village toward the Digley side, by the second stile. The notebook fixes it to the second stile, which is the kind of precision that pays off if you ever go back. I've walked that track since and thought of it each time, but the register takes what were recorded on the day and nowt after, so the second stile is where number 226 stands and where it stays.
Warm day, hazy over Black Hill, still in the long dry spell — eleven days after the forty-degree business, and the ground up there had cracks in it you could lose a pencil down. Condition of the trainer good.
The flask gets an honest entry: conditions fair only, tea slightly stewed, as I'd let it stand since half seven. That's my fault, not the flask's, and the notebook assigns the blame correctly. Egg and cress. Five photographs, all came out, and the notebook marks one of them "very well," which it doesn't often trouble to do — red against parched July grass, I expect, does half the camera's work for it. A good, bright, straightforward find at the top of the Holme Valley, in the middle of the biggest summer the register has ever had. They weren't all memorable that year. This one were, for the colour alone.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.