Left trainer, navy, laces in, tongue pulled forward — and the tongue is the detail the notebook leads with, because a pulled-forward tongue changes the whole aspect of a trainer and you record aspect while you can. It were at the foot of the bridge steps on the towpath by Ledgard Bridge, Mirfield. I'd parked near the bridge and the entry notes that I walked the towpath both ways to be thorough, which is standard practice — where there's one there's occasionally been another, and you don't want to read about it later in somebody else's photograph.
There weren't another. There usually isn't. But thoroughness isn't measured by what it finds.
Warm and close, with rain threatening all morning that never came, which is the most tiring sort of weather because you're braced for nowt. Flask conditions fair — the book is honest that the tea were a touch stewed by eleven and honest about whose fault that were, namely mine, for brewing it strong before setting off. I've never fully solved the strong-brew question. Brew it right for nine o'clock and it's thin by eleven; brew it for eleven and nine o'clock suffers. Our Linda says I think about this more than the shoes. She's not far wrong and I'm not troubled by it.
One photograph, came out. Mirfield doesn't feature heavy in the register but when it appears it tends to appear by water, and number 247 kept that pattern going. A middling entry from a good year, written up here with the respect middling entries are owed, which is the same respect as all the others.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.