August 2010

	Twickenham, Pirates & Eel Pie Island Twickenham, Middlesex, London. Sunday 1 Aug 2010
	Linda touches a dodgy looking mushroom There are still some real boatyards on Eel Pie Island Art was always a jolly good excuse for looking at naked women. These Carrera marble statues were probably made in Italy in th 1890s and were bought to be put here in 1909 by the Bombay prince Sir Ratan Tata who bought York House in 1906 from the Duc d’Orleans. They had been bought for Lea Park near Godalming by a wealthy financier who lost his fortune and took cyanide in 1904 (before the days of government handouts to bankers.) When I first saw them they were in a poor state and covered with graffiti, which perhaps made them rather more amusing, but were restored by a charitable trust formed for the purpose in 1988, with both the local council and English Heritage making contributions towards the cost, and re-opened in 1989. The pirates were embarking from a slime covered beach near the White Lion I had a suspicion that some of these pirates were land-lubbers simply dressed as pirates 'Pirate' is one of the languages recognised by Facebook - and of course used by my son who we were meeting and had I come earlier in the day I could have photographed him swimming around Eel Pie Island in the background here
	The ferry across the Thames to Ham used to operate from here Eel Pie Island Lion boathouse on Eel Pie Island View upstream from where the famous hotel stood on Eel Pie Island
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