There are entries in this register I transcribe and entries I remember, and this is one I remember, more or less whole, which is why it's getting more words than the notebook gave it. Some of the old ones I have to trust the pen. This one I could near enough write out with the notebook shut, though I haven't, because that's not how transcribing works. On the tenth of May 2025 I went back to the field gateway near Marsden, where number 1 were, October 2009 — right boot, brown, photographed on my phone because that's all I had and I didn't yet know I were starting owt. I go past the gateway now and then, the way you'd look in on a relative. This were different. This were planned the night before, map out on the table, sandwiches decided in advance. I told Our Linda where I were going and she said right you are. She said the same in 2009. I'd swear to that, though I can't prove it, because the 2009 entry were one line and none of it were Linda's, and neither of us knew at the time there'd ever be a reason to write down what were said in a kitchen. That's the trouble with beginnings. Nobody tells you they're beginnings.
And there were a shoe in the gateway. Right shoe, black, ordinary lace-up, laces gone, sole cracked across the ball. Weather were fair. Sixteen years apart, same gateway, and I'll say here what I've always said: I don't speculate on how, because that's not the point of what I do and it never has been, and if it were ever going to be the point it would have been the point that morning, and it wasn't. Two shoes, sixteen years, one gateway. Them's the facts and the facts are enough.
I'll allow the one comparison the notebook allows. The first were a boot and this were a shoe. So nobody can say the gateway repeats itself, because it doesn't. A boot and a shoe are different articles, I've kept them different in the register from the start, and the gateway, to its credit, kept them different an' all. Condition consistent with a season or two out.
The photograph took longer than the shoe did. The 2009 one were taken from the field side of the gate, slightly downhill of the post — I know that not because it's written anywhere but because I've looked at that photograph more than any other photograph I own. So I stood about a fair while finding the same ground. You'd think a gate has two sides and that's the end of it, but there's a lot of ground either side of a gate when you're trying to stand where you stood sixteen years since. I got it as near as I'm able to judge. Camera this time, not the phone. The photographs came out.
Flask conditions very good, and that's in the notebook so it goes here. I sat a good while. Longer than the shoe needed — the shoe were documented inside twenty minutes and I sat well past the hour, and I knew I were doing it while I were doing it, which isn't usual for me. I could put down now, with a year gone and more room on the page than a notebook gives you, what I were thinking about while I sat. I'm not going to.
The notebook entry ends 'it felt right, is all I'll put.' Transcribing it, I've read that line a good few times and considered whether now's the moment to expand on it, seeing as this whole exercise is about setting the old entries down properly. It isn't. Some entries are finished when they're finished, and that one were finished when I put the full stop in, in the field, with the flask still warm. What I'll say instead is nowt fancy: number 1 were the gateway, number 296 were the gateway, and in between there's two hundred and ninety-four shoes, each one written down on the day or near enough. That's what a register is for. It carries on. I packed up, said nowt to the shoe because you don't, and were home for tea, and Our Linda asked how I'd got on and I said very well, thanks, which were accurate.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.