Back on the Calder & Hebble, below Mirfield station this time. Left trainer, white with a green stripe, and the laces tied together — the two laces knotted to each other, I mean, not each lace tied in its own bow. The notebook says 'which I note but don't explain', and that's the discipline in one line. Laces tied together suggests things. I record the laces and leave the suggesting to others.
Warm day, midges about, which on a canal in July goes without saying but I said it anyway. And then the flask entry, which I'll quote in full because it's one of the few times the notebook tells me off: 'Flask conditions poor, tea stewed, my own fault for filling it at six.' I'd filled the flask an hour and a half before setting off, the tea had sat in there brewing itself into summat you could creosote a fence with, and I knew whose doing it were. I've filled the flask at the last minute ever since. You learn the method by getting it wrong once and writing the wrong down.
The photograph came out grainy, which is how most of them come out, and I've never bothered to fix. They suit the subject. Number 82.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.