Our Car, On the Drive — Right Walking Boot, Brown, In the Boot

I want to take this one slowly because I have not got the measure of it yet.

Saturday morning. I were getting ready for a planned outing — I'd had a tip-off off Barry about a layby on the Woodhead and I wanted to be away by half nine. The folding stool had been in the back of the car since Castle Hill because I never took it up the hill and then I never brought it in. So I went out to sort the boot. Get the stool stood up properly, shift the picnic blanket, make a bit of room. Routine. I've opened that boot a thousand times.

There were a boot in the boot.

I am going to say that the once and then I am going to get on with it. I am aware of how it reads. Our Linda has already said it twice and our Gary texted it back to me with three of the laughing faces. I am not going to make anything of it. It is where it is and that is what it is called and I'll not have the report turned into a comedy turn because of where a thing happened to be.

Right foot. A brown leather walking boot. A proper one — Vibram sole, six pairs of eyelets and two hooks at the top, padded round the ankle. Laces in and tied with a double knot. Mud on the sole, dried hard, so it had been off a foot a good while before it were ever in my car. Size ten, possibly eleven. It were stood upright, level, toe pointing out towards the tailgate, set down beside the folding stool as neat as you like. Not thrown in. Placed.

I'm a size nine. Our Linda is a five. Our Gary's an eleven but he's not been in this car — we got it in 2019 and he were in Leeds by then and he doesn't come over in his own and get in mine. I stood on the drive holding the stool for a bit. I did not know what to do with my face.

I lock the car. I want to be clear that I lock the car. I have locked that car every night on that drive since 2019 and the one before it since 1996. I could not, stood there Saturday, have told you for an absolute certainty that I locked it Friday. I expect I did. I have decided not to go further into that part. It does not help the documentation and it does not help me.

I went in and told Our Linda

I left it where it were and went back in the house. Our Linda were doing the crossword at the kitchen table with the radio on. I said, "Linda, there's a boot in the car." She said, "in the car." I said, "in the boot of the car." She put her pen down.

She came out in her slippers and had a look. She did not touch it. She has learned not to. She stood with her arms folded and looked at it a good while and then she went through it the way she does — were it there when we went to Marjorie's on Sunday (she didn't think so but she weren't in the boot), were it the lad at the tip when I took the old fence panels, were it summat to do with the MOT back in March when it were at the garage on Manchester Road two days. She landed on the garage. She said a lad there could've been doing summat in the back and left a boot. I said I didn't think a lad doing an MOT takes his boots off. She said, "Keith, you said that about the gas man." She had me there.

Then she went quiet and said, "well it's the same as the boiler one, then. You don't know." I said no. She said, "right," and went back in. I thought that were that.

It were not that. About ten minutes later she came out with a carrier bag. She'd done me a packed lunch. Egg and cress on the Warburtons toastie loaf, wrapped in greaseproof. Flask of tea, milk in. A Penguin, blue wrapper, the right one. I said I weren't going on the outing now, I'd not be wanting a packed lunch. She said, "it's not for the outing." She said, "you'll want to sit with it. You always sit with them. You'll not sit on the drive on a folding stool like a wazzock with the neighbours watching, so you'll sit in the car. You'll want your lunch." Then she went in and shut the door, not in a cross way, in the way she does when she's already thought of summat I've not got to yet.

I had my lunch in the car

So that is what I did. I sat in the driver's seat with the boot still in the boot behind me and I had my lunch. I had the radio off. I could see it in the mirror if I set the mirror down a bit, so I set the mirror down a bit. It did not do anything. It is a boot. But I wanted to be able to see it while I had my egg and cress, and I could, so that were alright.

Dinner time, more or less. Egg and cress, flask, the Penguin. You can see the boot in the back if you look. Our Linda were right that I'd want to sit with it. She usually is.

Mr. Ackroyd from number eleven went past with his dog while I were eating and gave me a look and a sort of half wave, the wave you give a man who is sat eating a sandwich in a parked car on his own drive at twelve o'clock on a Saturday. I gave him the same wave back. There is not a lot you can say through a windscreen so we left it at the wave. The dog were not interested. Dogs never are. I have written about that before and it still holds.

I took the photographs from where I were sat. They are not my best work. The light through a windscreen is flat and there's the dashboard in the way of the low angle. But I have decided that the conditions of the finding are part of the finding, the same as a layby in the rain is, and the conditions here were: a man having his lunch in his car because his wife was right that he would want to. I have left them as they are.

The matter of where it goes

I have thought about this more than the shoe, if I am honest, and I have not got anywhere, and I am going to write that down rather than pretend I have.

It is not the main sequence. The main sequence is a lone shoe found out in Huddersfield and the surrounding areas, in the field, where you come upon it. This were not in the field. It were in my car, on my drive, where I were not looking because you do not look in your own boot for a shoe, you look in it for the stool.

It is not Away Fixtures. That is for abroad and this is the drive. It is not the Wellington ledger; it is a proper boot. It is not a Return; I have never logged this boot before, it is not one of mine come back. The nearest is Indoor Findings — the one behind the boiler — because that were at home and in a place I weren't looking. But a car is not indoors. A car is not a room. It moves about. The shoe behind the boiler had been still since about 2015. This one has been, for all I know, up and down the Manchester Road and to Marjorie's and to the tip. I cannot in good conscience put a thing that has been to the tip in the same ledger as a thing that had been behind a boiler for a decade. They are not the same kind of still.

I have started to feel, lately, that I keep starting ledgers. I noticed it with the Return and I am noticing it harder now. There is a point where a man with too many ledgers is not documenting a thing properly any more, he is just making boxes so he doesn't have to look straight at how strange it's all got. I do not want to be that. So I am not going to start a ledger for this. Not today. I am going to leave it unfiled and I am going to keep thinking about it. It will say filing undecided at the top until it doesn't. That might be a while. Some things you have to sit with before you know what column they're in, and I have only had it since Saturday, and I have had a busy week at the merchant's besides.

What I've done with it

I have left it in the boot. I did not bring it in the house. The boiler one's in the house and I did not want them in the same building, and I have decided not to look too hard at why I felt that, because that is the same family of thing as the lock and I said I'd leave the lock.

There is a corner of card next to it that says logged 13/05/26 — KP, filing undecided. I have not gone on the outing. The stool is still not stood up properly. I have driven the car once since, to the merchant's and back, and I will be honest and say I were aware of it behind me the whole way and I had the radio on louder than I usually have it.

Our Linda asked Saturday teatime if I were alright. I said I were. She said, "you've gone like you went with the boiler." I said I had, a bit. She said, "well. It's a boot, Keith. It's not after owt." I said I knew that. She said, "your tea's ready. It's the gammon." It were the gammon. It were good.

Aye. I've spent seventeen years finding them where I went looking. This one were waiting where I keep the stool. I don't know what to call that yet. I'll sit with it.