The Swan in Heaven’s River

I opened my eyes around half past three in the morning and saw a drop of dew on the skylight window.  No, a star.  I couldn’t see its neighbors or the Milky Way, but figured it was Deneb.

That supergiant brings thoughts of the long hollow kind that repel sleep: it is 2,500 light years ahead of us in the 250-million-year journey around the galaxy; how many lifetimes?…  But then Deneb, Alpha star of Cygnus the Swan, kindly distracted me down to the swans on the river below the other window.

We slept in the Swan Inn, on Isleworth’s Swan Lane, the night before we moved in.

The sinuous Thames, a dozen miles upstream from London,

trends more northward than eastward.  The left and right banks (west and east) used to be in the counties of Middlesex and Surrey, but in the bureaucratic fiddling of the 1970s they were absorbed into Greater London – small Middlesex entirely so.  But people are loyal to the historic name (as with other abolished or mangled counties such as Westmorland and Berkshire).  Addresses give “Middlesex,” and a few hundred yards from us is the West Middlesex Hospital.

The Thames divides around the uninhabited island called Iselworth Eyot or Ait, about 600 yards long.  Isleworth, though its name has nothing to do with islands, was once a village alongside the Ait.  The fields around it have become filled with suburb, as has happened with other Thames-side places such as Sunbury.  Old Isleworth is really just Church Street.  We are in the middle of the short row of old houses between the street and the river.

At the north end of the row is a celebrated pub, called the London Apprentice.  Past it the street widens into what is both a car park and a dock overlooking the river.  Back from this, on a bit of rising ground, is All Saints Church: an interesting modern building connected to an old tower.  For it was burned down, except for the tower, in 1943, not by a German bomb but by two boys.

So the space might be called London Apprentice Square or Church Square or Confluence Square.  From it you see the confluence of the river’s two channels around the downstream end of the Ait.

I’ve made this what I call an “Italy-shaped” picture so as to include, on the left, the main channel; on the right, the lesser channel that goes past us, and on the extreme right the London Apprentice.

And this is the scene later the same day: low tide.

It’s London’s only beach, though not a sandy one.  People come and play on it, and at low tide some wade over to the Ait.  They shouldn’t, since it’s a nature preserve, but the sign warning them off has been knocked down by a falling tree and not yet replaced.  We shout at them only if they throw stones at the waterbirds – swans, geese, ducks, moorhens, grebes, herons.

If you could see through the London Apprentice, you would see into our house.  Many English houses, even newish suburban ones, have names (“Dunroamin,” “Mogador.”..) as well as numbers.  Not so in this row of old houses, but, ours being number 48, and across from the island, I whimsically name it Fordy Ait.

I’ve added to my map some details that I ought to explain later.

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ILLUSTRATIONS in these posts are made with precision but have to be inserted in another format.  You may be able to enlarge them on your monitor.  One way: right-click, and choose “View image”, then enlarge.  Or choose “Copy image”, then put it on your desktop, then open it.  On an iPad or phone, use the finger gesture that enlarges (spreading with two fingers, or tapping and dragging with three fingers).  Other methods have been suggested, such as dragging the image to the desktop and opening it in other ways.

Sometimes I make improvements or corrections to a post after positing it.  If you click on the title, rather than on ‘Read more’, I think you are sure to see the latest version.

This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.