The Wessenden valley on a bright February morning is as good as that ground gets, and the wind coming straight down off the moor is the price of it. The notebook has 'bright, cold wind, straight down the valley' and I can vouch for every word, because that wind finds you whatever you've got on.
Child's shoe, right, blue, with a Velcro strap, so no laces to report — the notebook has 'n/a' in the laces column, which is the correct way to do it rather than leaving a blank, because a blank looks like you forgot. It were sat on a flat stone beside the path, square on, like somebody had set it there. I record that as an observation of position, nothing more. How it came to be there isn't my department and never has been.
Small size, good condition — one season out at most, going by the strap and the colour. Children's shoes are always the ones I sit longest with, and I'd brought the stool that morning because I'd had a feeling about it, and I were glad of it, because the flat stones up Wessenden are cold enough in February to end a sit before it's started. Twenty minutes, the notebook says. Egg and cress. Two photographs and both came out, which for that valley in a wind is a good return — the light bounces off the water and does odd things to a camera. It's an entry I remember without needing the notebook, this one, though the notebook agrees with me, which is how it should be.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.