The Butterley spillway is a fine piece of Victorian work and the steps beside it held a right trainer, blue, on the first proper cold morning of the autumn. The laces were present but frayed to nowt at the ends, which I noted because a lace can be present and still be no use as a lace, and the register should say which.
The notebook has leaves coming down on the water, and flask conditions excellent — the first 'excellent' of the year, if I'm reading my own columns right, and I'd believe it, because a flask of tea on the first cold morning of autumn is the flask doing precisely the job it were bought for. Cold weather flatters a flask. I've noticed that across the whole register and it holds up.
Two photographs, one came out. October 2015 were six years into the practice, and reading the notebook back you can feel it settling into the shape it still has: shoe, laces, condition, position, weather, flask, photographs. All the parts present except the stool, and the stool were only a few months away, though I'd not decided owt about a stool at that point. I were sitting on whatever came to hand, and at the spillway that morning it will have been the steps.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.