About Nora
Swan Street runs down to the water in Isleworth, and Nora walks it slowly every single time, including in the rain. She is 166 cm with an athletic build and long honey blonde hair, and hazel eyes that look green near the river and brown once she is indoors. Her clothes are quiet and well cut, and she notices fabric on other people, which is a habit she has learned not to mention out loud.
Mid twenties, English speaking, observant to the point of being slightly disconcerting. She will remember what you ordered last time and how much of it you left. She sketches, badly and happily, and there is a pencil in the pocket of every coat she owns. She walks everywhere she reasonably can and takes the long way round most of it. Give her a street she has not seen before and she will read every door on it before she reaches the end.
The Town Wharf sits right on the water at the bottom of Swan Street with a terrace over the Thames, and on a rising tide the river comes up the slipway and everybody picks up their glasses and moves inside, which she maintains is the best entertainment in TW7. Dinner afterwards is in the village or back along the London Road. She lives in Paddington, so it is Waterloo and thirty five minutes, or a car down the Great West Road when the evening starts late.
She is away until the twenty ninth of September. The Isleworth page covers the ground, and dates after that can be held through booking.
- 166 cm, athletic, long honey blonde hair
- Hazel eyes, mid twenties, English speaking
- Anchored in Isleworth, TW7
- Riverside evenings at the bottom of Swan Street
- Away until 29 September
Booking Nora
Away until 29 September, with later dates held on request. She likes a seven o'clock start so the terrace is still usable, and two hours at £500 or three at £700 are the usual shapes.
Every figure she works to is printed on the fare board, and the four steps from message to doorbell sit on the booking page.
Also out tonight
An evening with Nora
Seven o'clock at the bottom of Swan Street, a table on the terrace if the weather is behaving and the tide is not, and the river going past about two feet below you. She will point out the church, the wharf and the heron that is always on the same post, and she will check the tide table on her phone without embarrassment.
Dinner is a short walk into the village. She eats well, notices everything on the table and will quietly redraw the napkin folding while she talks. The evening is calm rather than loud, and it goes on longer than you planned because there is no reason for it not to. She takes the late train and reads all the way back.
Nora, on the record
Q.01Does the river really come up over the road?
Several times a month on a spring tide, and every regular knows the timings. It is not dramatic, it is just the Thames doing what it has always done. Newcomers take photographs and locals move their cars.
Q.02What do you sketch?
Buildings, mostly, and the occasional hand. None of it is good and none of it is meant to be. It is just a way of looking at something for longer than a photograph would take.
Q.03Indoors or out?
Out, until it is genuinely too cold, and then a table by a window. I would rather see the water than a wall.