My boots soaked through by nine — mine, not the subject's. The notebook makes that distinction and I've kept it in, because it's the sort of clerical care the register runs on. When there are two sets of footwear in an entry you say whose is whose.
Left trainer, black, laces missing, by the stile on the footpath that drops from Hoyle House fields at Linthwaite down towards the canal. Stiles collect shoes the way laybys do, though at a gentler rate, and this one presented plainly — no placement worth remarking, just a trainer by a stile. Grey and still, with a heavy dew that were the morning's main feature and the reason for the state of my boots. Dew soaks worse than rain, I've found, because you don't take it serious until it's done.
The entry finishes with a line that catches the whole spell: the autumn were giving them up faster than I could get round, and I had two more reports waiting in the book. That were the November of 2023 — sightings coming in, verges producing, and me working through them in order like a man with a round. I remember the feeling of being behind, which is a strange feeling in a pursuit with no deadline and nobody waiting, but there it is, and the book confirms the backlog were real. And it kept growing — Barry's Batley one came in later that month on top of everything else, though that's a report of its own. This one, number 257, got its photograph — came out — and its note, and I were off to the car with wet feet and a full docket. There are worse states for a man to be in. I'm not sure there's a better one.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.