This is the entry where the biro gave out. It starts in blue ink and finishes in pencil, halfway through the word laces, and the rest of the year is pencil from there on. The pencil has held up better than the biro. The early ink pages have gone a bit ghostly and the pencil is as clear as the day it were wrote.
The shoe itself deserved better than a dying pen. Left shoe, black, smart sort, leather sole, laces tied, on the towpath below Titanic Mill at Linthwaite. A smart leather-soled shoe on a towpath is a different class of find from a trainer in the grass, and the notes give it its due — sole material recorded for the first time in the register.
Still morning, mist on the water till ten. I remember the mill coming out of the mist floor by floor as it lifted. That's memory, not notebook, so take it accordingly, but I'd stake summat on it. No photograph mentioned, which I regret, because the light would have suited the subject.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.