The entry for the 27th of December 2010 reads, in full: Right shoe. Brown. Near the station. Laces tied. No photograph. Ten words, which were about as much as owt got in Notebook 1. One in July that year got six. This is one of the early ones I remember properly, which is why it's getting the length now, sixteen years on. A lot of Notebook 1 is just ink to me these days. Number 14 isn't.
We had a full house that Christmas. Our Linda's side. I'll not go through them all, because the notebook, quite rightly, doesn't cover domestic arrangements, but I believe Marjorie were stopping over, and Marjorie doesn't travel light or alone. There were an air bed in the front room and a trifle in the fridge that nobody would take responsibility for finishing. It had a spoon left in it. Linda's lot are good company and I want that on the record. There were just a great number of them, and a house only holds what it holds.
On the morning of the 27th I were up before anybody else, which weren't difficult, and I decided I'd walk to Marsden. Not drive. Walk. The towpath runs more or less door to door if you don't mind the length of it, and that morning the length of it were the main attraction. Why a man might want a seven-mile walk two days after Christmas is not a question the notebook takes up, and I'll follow its example. Marsden had already given me number 1, back in October 2009, though I'll not pretend that were in my head. I filled the flask before I left. Tea, milk in. Flask conditions weren't a field I kept in them days, so owt I say about the tea is memory, not record. My memory says it did its job.
The walk itself I can give you as procedure, because that's how I hold it. Canal out of town, locks coming steady, ice on the puddles by the lock beams — though I should say the notebook records no weather, because weather didn't start going in until 2012, so the cold is memory an' all. I remember it being bitter. Then again I'd remember any 27th of December being bitter, so that's not evidence, that's just December. I stopped above Slaithwaite and ate a sandwich leaning on a lock gate. What were in the sandwich I couldn't tell you. Turkey, at a guess, that week.
The shoe were on Station Road, near the station, which is exactly the sort of sentence the notebook liked. Right shoe. Brown. And the laces were tied. I want to dwell on that, because I didn't have room to in 2010 and I've been waiting. Most of what I find is laces gone, laces trailing, laces perished down to string. A tied lace is rare. In sixteen further years I could count the tied ones without taking me gloves off. This one were done in a proper bow — even, both loops the same size, the sort of bow you do when you're not rushing. That detail is memory, mind. The notebook only says tied. But I stood with that shoe a fair while, no stool in them days, just stood, and a bow like that stays with you. What a tied lace means isn't for me to say, and I never say it. What it did was stop a man on a cold road, and it doesn't take much, but it took summat that morning.
No photograph. I don't now remember why. Happen the phone were still at the house, where a fair amount else were an' all. I got the train back from Marsden, which after seven miles out seemed reasonable, and I were home before dinner. The house were exactly as full as I'd left it and I were glad to see it, which I'd like noted, because a man can need the air and be fond of what he's airing himself from at the same time. The notebook doesn't cover any of that, quite rightly. It covers the shoe. Right shoe, brown, laces tied. Crackin' bow. Sixteen years on, it's the bow I remember best.
Written up August 2026, from the notebook.