A man with a spaniel asked if I'd lost summat. I said I hadn't. He watched a while and went on. The notebook gives that exchange three sentences and I've given it the same here, because that's all it took and all it needed, but I'll admit it's one of my favourite entries of the year to read back. Most conversations in this line of work follow that shape. The honest answer to what I'm doing takes longer than most people have, and 'I haven't lost owt' is true, complete, and lets everybody get on.
The shoe itself: left, black leather, lace-up, with the laces knotted where they'd snapped, which tells you it were a working shoe kept going past the point of dignity, and I respect that in a shoe. It were on the stones by the beck at Magdale, Honley, just above the waterline, and the entry notes I had to watch my footing getting the angle. Beck stones in September carry a slime the eye doesn't catch, and a man of sixty stood in a beck holding a camera is one slip away from being a story in the Examiner.
Soft grey morning, the beck low after the dry spell — low enough that the shoe sat clear of the water, which is likely why it were still presentable. Flask conditions good. The photograph came out. Magdale is a gentle spot and it gave a gentle entry, spaniel included. Number 251, and the man with the spaniel, wherever he is, remains the only witness to its documentation. He didn't seem to think much of it. That's generally the way, and I've no quarrel with it.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.