There's entries in the old notebooks I couldn't tell you a thing about beyond what's written down. Number sixty-seven isn't one of them. This one I remember properly, all these years on, which is why it's getting more space here than the notebook ever gave it. The notebook gave it four lines. That were a lot, for 2014.
Right boot, brown. Laces tied together and hung on a fence post at the edge of Honley Old Wood. Mild for September, dry underfoot. Egg and cress. Those are the facts of the record and they stand.
Now. In my own mind, and never anywhere else, I keep two categories: a dropped shoe and a hung shoe. The register doesn't make the distinction and I've never formalised it, because the moment you formalise a thing somebody asks you what the difference signifies, and I don't know what it signifies. I only know that a dropped shoe takes me ten minutes and a hung one takes me the best part of an hour. A dropped shoe, you note where it lies, left or right, colour, condition, laces, and you move on. A hung shoe, you note all of that, and then you find you're still stood there.
What I noted that day, as best I can give it to you. The laces were tied together, which the notebook confirms. Beyond the notebook it's memory, and I'll flag it as memory: I remember the knot being a proper knot, done with some care, not a tangle. I remember the toe pointing out from the wood, towards the field. I remember the post being about chest height on me, an ordinary fence post, nowt special about it apart from what were on it. Memory's not the register and I keep the two separate, but that's what memory says, and after twelve years it's held steady, which counts for summat.
I want to be careful here, because this entry sits closer to a certain edge than most, and I've thought about the edge more than once since. 'Hung' is a word about the boot. It describes where the boot was and how it was there, same as 'upright' or 'in a puddle' or 'frozen to the setts'. It is not a word about anything else. There's a step you could take from 'hung' to a further word, and anybody who's stood at a fence post for an hour knows which word I mean, and I've stood at the top of that step a fair few times over the years and never once taken it. That's not what I do. You record what's there. What were there were a boot, hung.
As to how long I stood, the notebook doesn't record times and I've never seen the need to start. Memory says a good while. Long enough that the light changed on the field. There were no folding stool in them days, the stool didn't come along till a fair bit later, so it were standing or nowt, and it were standing.
The same entry says egg and cress, and that's worth pausing on, because it's the first egg and cress in the written record. Our Linda had been making them long before that, years before, but the sixth of September 2014 is the day one made it into the notebook, and once summat's in the notebook it's in. I couldn't tell you why that were the day I wrote the sandwich down. Happen the standing had summat to do with it. When you've been at a fence post the best part of an hour, the sandwich carries more weight than it normally would, and I must have felt it belonged in the record alongside the boot. I still think it did. Foil, opened stood up, eaten looking at the boot, if memory serves, and I think it does.
There's no photograph filed and the notebook doesn't say whether I took one. Either it didn't come out or I never got the camera out, and after this long I'll not guess which. Crackin' spot, the edge of Honley Old Wood in September, and I've been past the post since, more than once. The record holds what it holds. Right boot, brown, laces tied together, hung. Egg and cress. Both noted the same day, and rightly so.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.