We walk the common path - what is allowed on this side of the river. 

Beyond the iron fences at Richmond, the golfers have The King’s Observatory in their courses and a priory under one hole. The charitable charter houses of the fourteen hundreds were given to quiet contemplation; The long dead are doubly quiet having taken vows.  If there are golfers overhead, they are screened from the likes of us by acreage of parkland for the contemplation of their rods.    

The view at Kew far from new - the trees humbly step back from the green red carpet. Of course it is Capability Brown. The paddlers on the river are green at best. A father screams at the eldest, further downstream but not drifting: It is an escape; this guard has an oar not the rifle he longs for. “Get your / fat arse / back here” a snitch sibling sings, his voice carrying unconvincingly across the river… and to his captor…. who turns upstream wondering where the kid gets it from…  

The houses on the river are lovely, but being on the river, must flood; hence keeping distance, drawing up petticoats of banks, gardens, lawns as they discard their boat house shoes to the mud. Perhaps they dip a toe from time to time but decades pass and it's easier now to fly than wade. 

In Old Isleworth Caesar lays waste to crisp packets and marches over benches and bridges. A man shouts “If you hurt yourself, it will be your own fault.” The rampage continues: Unto Caesar are rendered more crisps. God may take what’s left.

The public road through Syon park separates the private park from the private house. Leaning on the low car, with a custom licence plate, a couple ostentatiously neck at the public entrance. The lust cools, seeing we’re not paparazzi.

As we walk we remember the Syon Park Butterfly House from our youth. The Duke sold his land (as is his right) to build the Radisson Edwardian Hotel. Radisson sold the rights (as is their right) to make the Syon Park Waldorf Astoria Hotel. The new owners seem wrong in their right to rebrand and rewrite, as the Hilton London Syon Park stands there now. Butterflies don’t live there any more, only rent by the night.    

As we pass “Johns&Co Estate Agent’s”, née “Brentford’s market square”, three more super cars parade, announced by their own throbbing vanity. At fractions of miles-per-hour they stack behind a bus, revving impotently to the people who sit all day at Greggs.

Finally in darkness, in a beech hut, in the garden of the Brentford Station pub we are told first hand how many of the Guinness family have webbed toes. It wasn’t only the money they kept in the family. At seven pounds a pint, the stout is the bitterer for it.