Since the register were transcribed I have had all the entries in one place for the first time, and it seemed a shame not to count them. So I have. It took some evenings at the kitchen table, and then I did it again the following week to check, and the two counts agreed apart from one, which turned out to be me. Our Linda asked what I was going to do with the figures once I had them. I said I would put them on the website, and she said right you are, and that was that.
I would say before we start that these are the figures as they stand in August 2026. They will change. Shoes do not stop because a man has done his sums.
The two that are not stated are from the early notebooks, when I did not always write it down, which I regret now but there is nothing to be done about it. As for the gap between right and left, I have looked at it a good while and I have no explanation for it and I am not going looking for one. The shoes are what they are. I just count them.
Boots leading will surprise nobody who knows the ground round here. The 56 recorded only as “shoe” are mostly early entries, before I settled on being more particular, and I have let them stand as written because you cannot go back and improve a record without it stopping being a record.
Of the 321, 31 across all types were children's sizes. I record them the same as the rest.
December is the quietest month. That will be the daylight. March through June all coming in at 30 apiece is tidy, and I want to be clear I have not arranged that, it is just how it fell.
The busiest years were 2022 with 31, 2023 with 28, and 2024 with 26. The quietest were 2009 with 4, though that were only a part year as I started in October, then 2010 with 10 and 2011 with 12. The early figures are low because the practice were new and I did not yet know where to look, or that I was looking.
I know how the Marsden figure looks and I will say plainly that it is not favouritism. It is where I walk, and it is good shoe country, and those are two facts that happen to sit next to each other. If the shoes were somewhere else I would walk somewhere else. The 11 logged as “above Marsden” are kept separate in the record because that is how I wrote them at the time, and I have honoured it, though I accept they are all, in the ordinary sense, Marsden.
Two losses in seventeen years is, I think, a fair record, though it is not really mine to take credit for. They keep their numbers.
On the photographs, 28 is the number of times the register says the photograph didn't come out, but I should be honest and say the true figure is higher. The early notebooks often didn't record the attempt, only the shoe, so a failed photograph from 2010 has simply gone. The ones that did come out tend to be a bit grainy. I have never bothered to fix that. They suit the subject.
Not included in any of the figures above:
The wellingtons have their own ledger and always will. I have set out my reservations elsewhere and I will not go over them again here, except to say that 23 is the number and the number is not the issue.
That is the lot. I will update this page when the figures warrant it, which on current form will be roughly every fortnight, though I make no promises. December excepted.