A tidy shoe in a tidy spot, the notebook calls it, and I'd not improve on that. Left brogue, tan, polished at some point though not lately — you can tell lapsed polish from never-polished, the shine sits in the seams — with the laces in. It were against the churchyard wall at St Lucius, Farnley Tyas, which is as pleasant a corner as the district owns, and the book records a fine spring morning with the blossom out on the lane, so the whole entry reads like a postcard with a brogue in it.
I didn't get the stool out. The notebook says churchyards aren't the place for a sit-down in my view, though I've no rule written down on it, and reading that back three years on I notice I still haven't written one down and I still don't sit. Some rules do their work better unwritten. I had the flask in the car afterwards, parked on the lane, and I remember the blossom on the windscreen, or at any rate I remember blossom and a windscreen and I'm content to let the two of them share the memory.
One photograph, came out. A brogue against drystone in good light is about as kind a subject as this pursuit provides, and I'd guess it's one of the better frames of the year, though I'd have to go to the folder to swear to it. Number 242, noted with the respect a polished shoe is owed, and left against the wall where it stood.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.