A churchyard find, which asks a bit more of you than a layby does. Right slip-on, black, the elasticated sort, up against the boundary wall of St Bartholomew's at Marsden. Respectable condition, hardly worn — the notebook says 'a Sunday shoe', and whether it were or it weren't isn't mine to say, but it were that class of shoe. No laces to record, obviously, it being a slip-on, though I noted the elastic were sound on both sides because a field is a field and you fill it in.
I kept the whole business brief out of respect for the setting. Photographed it from the path — I'll not step among graves for an angle, and any shoe that wants me to can go unphotographed. Two photographs, both adequate. The notebook doesn't record me speaking to anybody and I don't remember anybody about, just the church and the blossom, which were out and heavy that week. Mild day, the first properly soft one of the spring.
Our Linda had done egg and cress, and I had them stood by the car on Church Lane rather than in the churchyard, which felt like the correct arrangement and still does. I remember the sandwiches better than I remember leaving, if I'm honest, which after two years is about the usual ratio. The slip-on went in the register as found and left as found, and that were Marsden done for the spring — though the village weren't finished with me for the year, as the Butterley trainer in May goes to show.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.