The notebook has a conversation in it for this one, which is rare, so I'll give it in full further down. The shoe first, as is proper. Left trainer, white gone grey, by the spillway at Butterley Reservoir, Marsden — and the spillway at Butterley is worth a look in its own right, all them stepped stone channels, though that's not what I were there for. Laces present, both untied. Fair condition apart from the colour, which the weather had taken from white to a grey you couldn't put a name to.
Warm morning, two weeks after the Wessenden boot, and the midges were about, which the notebook records and which I remember without needing the notebook. I photographed the trainer from above and from the side and were packing up when a man walking his dog stopped and asked what I were photographing. I told him. A trainer, I said, and pointed at it. He looked at it a while — a good while, credit to him — and then he said he'd never have noticed it, and off he went with the dog.
Most people don't notice them. That's not a criticism of the man; it's near enough the whole reason the register exists. A shoe on its own is one of them things the eye slides past unless the eye has been trained otherwise, and mine has had fifteen years of training by then. The notebook ends the entry there and so will I, except to say the dog showed no interest in the trainer either, which I remember thinking were a point in the dog's favour.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.