Honley Woods, off the top path. Child's trainer, right, red with a white sole, the velcro sort, and both straps done up. Size ten or eleven in children's, I'd say — that's an estimate and it's recorded as one, because I don't handle them, and a size read off a lying shoe without touching it is judgement, not fact. The register keeps the two separate or it's worth nowt.
The leaves were just starting to turn, first weekend it showed, and the woods were quiet — just pigeons, which the notebook records, wood pigeons being more or less the house band of every wood in this district. A red trainer on a brown wood floor photographs well, I'll say that. It stood out the way most of my subjects don't, and the pictures came out strong for once.
The stool were in the car, me not having had a feeling about this one, so I sat on a log for the flask. The tea were a touch stewed — brewed too long that morning, my fault, not the flask's, and the notebook is careful to say so because the flask conditions field shouldn't carry blame that belongs elsewhere. I drank it anyway. You do.
I noted the trainer and came away, and that's the entry. A children's shoe in a wood gets recorded the same as any other shoe anywhere else — that's always been the way of it and it held here. Left as found, straps done up, red against the leaves. Some of them stay with you a bit longer than the notes would suggest. This were one, though I've nowt more to say about that.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.