Fog on the tops till dinner, the notebook says, and Merrydale Clough in fog is a close sort of walking — you hear the beck before you see much else. Left boot, brown leather, fair condition, one lace only, in the grass above Slaithwaite. One lace only is worth recording because it's neither laced nor unlaced. It's its own condition.
I noted it and left it. I couldn't tell you now how I come to be up Merrydale Clough that morning — whether it were planned or I just fancied it. The notebook records finds, not intentions, which looking back is a gap in the method, but there we are.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.