Rigby Woods, Huddersfield — Right Work Boot, Tan, In the Drain

I have not put a report up on here since Pule Hill at the end of May. I want to say why before I say owt else, because it is not that I have not been out. It is that what happened at the start of this month has taken me a while to know what to do with, and I do not like putting a thing up before I have got the measure of it.

Them that watch the films will know about the business in town, so I will not go over the whole of it again. The short of it is that on the Wednesday I had word of a sighting and I went down, and it were the Rigby shoe. Number 274. The white left trainer with the lace gone off the one side, that I sat with half an hour up in that wood two year back. It were on the pavement outside Boots. I have had the photographs from 2024 out on the table next to the photographs from last week and it is the same shoe. It is the lace, or the want of one. There is no doubt in it for me and I have looked for doubt.

I did not bring it home. I want that in writing. I stopped with it a bit and then I left it where it were, same as I have left every one of them, and I walked back to the car in the rain. I have thought about that a fair amount since.

Back up to the wood

So on Saturday I went back up to Rigby Woods. Our Linda asked what I were going up for and I said I wanted to look at the place where it had been. She said right you are, and did me a bag.

It has grown right in since I were last up. Two year of summers will do that and I had not thought on it. The path is half the width it were, there is cow parsley over your knees and nettles both sides of you and the whole lot of it dripping, and it rained near enough all the way there and all the way back. It were warm rain, mind. August rain. You get wet through but you do not get cold with it, which is a different sort of day out and not a bad one.

The place where it were

You would think a man might struggle to put his hand on one particular yard of a wood he were last stood in two year back. I found it first go. I did not have to look for it and I did not have to think about it. I have turned that over a bit since an' all.

There is a mark in the leaf mould where it sat. An oval, about the size of your two hands put together, where nowt has grown and the leaf litter has gone flat and dark and packed down. You would walk over it and see nowt. You would not know what had made it if you had not sat with the thing yourself.

I got the camera out and took four photographs of it. I have had them up on the computer at home and they are photographs of some leaves. There is nothing in them. Anybody looking would say that is leaves, Keith, and they would be right, so I have not put them up on here. I am telling you about it instead, which is not the same thing, and I am sorry for that.

I got the stool out and sat down by it a bit. Not half an hour. Twenty minutes happen. It come on to rain harder while I were sat there and I stopped where I were, because the jacket is a good one and there is no sense getting up out of rain when you are already stood in it.

My dinner

I had me dinner at about half twelve. Egg and cress, and a Penguin, and the flask. Our Linda had done them in the foil and put them in the bag same as always. I had it sat on the stool with the rain coming down through the leaves on to the foil. The bread went a bit damp at the corners towards the end but that were nowt to bother about.

My dinner. The flask were tea, milk in. The Penguin were the last one out of the box, which I did not know at the time.

I had my dinner in that same wood on the day I found 274, and I will say that the dinner were the same both times, and that were a comfort to me sat there.

On the way out

I come down the track towards the road about two o'clock, and there were a boot in the drain.

It is a rigger boot. Tan leather, padded collar, steel toe by the shape of the cap on it, and a good sole with a proper cleat. We sell them at the merchant's. I could tell you the make stood here now with my eyes shut, and I am not going to, because I do not do makes in the ledger, but I knew it in the rain as well as I know my own hands.

Right foot. Led on its side in the drain at the edge of the track with the water going round it and about an inch of water stood in it. Laces still in and still done up, which is the usual. Well worn. Somebody has had a good long while out of that boot and there is no getting round the fact that somebody has walked home short of it.

Me on the track. I have took to putting one of these in so you can see what the weather were doing. That is the boot down behind me in the drain if you look for it.

And I want to be honest about what I felt, because I have got into a habit this year of putting things down and then not saying what I made of them. I were glad of it. I stood in the rain and looked at an ordinary boot in an ordinary drain and I were that glad of it I could near enough have laughed. It is a boot. Somebody has lost a boot. I do not know how and I do not know when and I never will, and that is right, that is the whole of it, that is what I have been doing since October 2009.

What it goes down as

The boot is 321. Main sequence. Rigby Woods is Huddersfield, the drain is out in the field, the boot is a lone shoe and there is nowt else to say about it. That one took me about four seconds and I enjoyed all four.

Now then. 274.

It is not a new find. It has a number. It has had a number since 2024, and you cannot give one shoe two numbers, that is not a ledger, that is a mess.

It is not a Return either. I started Returns for the boot up on Wessenden Moor, and the whole of what a Return is, is a shoe found again in the same place. That is the point of the thing. This one were not in the same place. It were seven mile from the same place, on a pavement, in town, outside a chemist.

So it is not a find and it is not a Return. I have had the book open on the kitchen table the best part of a week over it.

What I have done, and I am not saying it is right, is I have wrote 274 in again on this week's page with the new date and the new place on it, and I have drawn a line from it back across to the 2024 entry so as anybody can see they are the one shoe. And I do not like how it looks. It looks like a mistake. It looks like a man who has put the same shoe down twice and not noticed.

Barry from Dewsbury has emailed to say he reckons it wants its own section. Barry is a good lad and he has been very sound about this and he is wrong. I know what I would have done a year back. I would have started a ledger. I would have called it Movements or summat and ruled it off neat and felt a good deal better for an evening. I am not doing that. I said in May that a man with too many ledgers is not documenting a thing properly any more, he is just making boxes so he does not have to look straight at how strange it has all got, and I meant it, and it turns out it is still true when it is me that wants the box.

So it stops where it is. 274 is wrote down twice with a line drawn between and it looks wrong on the page. I am going to leave it looking wrong. It is wrong.

I said not long back, about a shoe on a pub carpet on a Friday night, that if you know how a shoe come to be where it is then it is not really a find. I have thought about that a fair bit this week and all. Because here is one where I do not know how it come to be where it were found, and I do not know how it come to leave where it were before, and by my own reckoning that ought to make it the best find I have ever had in seventeen year. It does not feel like the best find I have ever had. I do not know what to do with that either, and I have stopped pretending to myself that I will have worked it out by next month.

I told Our Linda about the wood when I got in, that I had been up and the spot were empty and I had sat by it a bit. She said, "you've gone all that way to look at some leaves." I said aye. She said, "was it worth going?" and I said it were, and she said "well then," and put the kettle on, and that were the end of it.

Aye. A wet day up Rigby. I went up to look at nowt in particular and I found a boot in a drain on the road home, which is how it nearly always goes and I would not have it any other road. Number 321, and glad of it. The other one is stood in the book twice with a line drawn between and I am leaving it be for now. The wood has grown right in since I were last up. Two year does that, and you do not see it happening.