I've been going back through the notebooks this year, writing up the ones that warrant it, and for most of them the notebook has to do the remembering — I read what I put down and take my own word for it. Not this one. The Netherton slipper is under two years back and I'd remember it if the notebook burned — the wall, the wind, the whole business of how I come to be stood there — which is why it's getting the length. Some entries you write up. This one I can still hear Linda delivering.
It started, as a fair few things in this house start, with Our Linda's cousin Marjorie. Marjorie rides the 324 and misses nothing from it. She'd seen the slipper on the wall by the bus stop at Netherton twice in one week, and she told Linda, and Linda told me over tea, and I want to be accurate about the tone, because the tone is the point. It weren't a tip-off. It weren't Marjorie's seen summat you might want to have a look at. It were delivered the way you'd be told the bins are going fortnightly now — a matter already decided, somewhere above my level, with me down as the man who does the going. I weren't in at the merchant's that Tuesday. I went on the Tuesday.
And there it were, right slipper, tartan sort, on the wall as described. Which is where the difficulty started, because a slipper is not a straightforward matter. I keep a wellington ledger, separate, and my reservations about wellingtons are on record and I'll not go over them again here. But stood at that bus stop I could feel the slipper leaning towards the same question. A wellington is outdoor footwear through and through, which is partly my trouble with it. A slipper is the opposite — indoor footwear entirely. And I could see, with the wind coming at me, that if I started ruling on footwear by where it ought to be rather than where it is, the whole register comes loose at the seams. You'd have shoes failing entry on grounds of comfort. That's no way to run owt.
So the deliberation, which on a kinder day might have had a sit-down and a cup of tea about it, were conducted stood up, at speed, and come down in the end to one sentence: it's footwear, it were alone, and it were there. That's been the test since 2009 and it held. A slipper passes on all three counts and nothing else about it is the register's business. Entered, number 286, no asterisk, no note of hesitation beyond the honest one. The wellingtons stay where they are. I'd add that the wind were bitter — proper November, straight off the tops — and I've sometimes wondered whether case law settled in that weather settles quicker than it otherwise might, but it's settled, and I stand by it in the warm an' all.
The record itself were short work. Good condition, hardly worn. No laces, being a slipper, which made that section of the notes the quickest I've ever completed. Photographed quick and clean, flask never left the bag, and home. The whole visit can't have run ten minutes, which for a find of this significance is brief, but the wind were making the case for brevity better than I could argue against it.
Two things about Marjorie by way of closing. The first is that her reporting were accurate in every particular — wall, side of the road, right foot, tartan — and I've learned since that this is Marjorie all over; she's put one or two more my way in the time since and I've yet to catch her out on a detail. The second is that she were told her sighting had been confirmed and entered, and I understand she brings it up on the 324 to this day, to strangers, some of whom I gather have gone on to look at the website. As recruitment for the register goes it's not a method I'd have chosen, and I've never fully worked out how I feel about it, but the numbers is the numbers and I can't argue with her results.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.