The notebook calls this one 'a working man's boot' and I remember agreeing with meself about that on the spot. Left boot, black, on the reservoir path at Deer Hill, up towards the shooting range end. It were lying on its side, and with the boot on its side the steel cap showed at the toe, which is the only reason I could record it as steel toe — I don't lift them, as a rule, and I don't make exceptions for curiosity. The boot tells you what it tells you from where it lies. This one told you plenty: laces in, good condition, a boot somebody had been working in not long since.
Cold wind off the moor, proper March stuff, the sort that finds the gap between your collar and your cap and lives there. Deer Hill is exposed and makes no apology for it. Flask conditions fair — the notebook says the milk had turned the tea a shade pale, which is Our Linda's measuring some mornings, and I record it without complaint because the flask field records what's true, not what's diplomatic. Four photographs, all came out, which for a black boot in flat March light I were pleased with.
I didn't stop long. Deer Hill in a wind isn't sitting country and the boot, for all its qualities, weren't a sitter. Noted, photographed, left as found. It's the sort of entry that reads like nowt much and were exactly the sort of morning I'd take over most other ways of spending a Saturday, then and now.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.