Why the same names keep turning up
The TW postcodes were a string of separate villages and small towns long before they joined up into one continuous suburb, and each of them named its roads for the obvious reasons: where the road went, what stood on it, which way it led out of town. So the road to London became London Road in several places at once, the road towards Staines became Staines Road, and every one of those settlements had its own High Street and its own Church Street. Nobody thought it would matter, because nobody expected Hounslow and Isleworth to become the same built up place.
It matters now. A companion travelling out from town, or a driver taking her, types a road name into a phone, and the phone offers the first match it finds. If the address you sent was 'London Road', you have given her about four choices and no way of knowing which one you meant.
The names that repeat
London Road is the worst offender. There is a London Road in Hounslow, where the High Street runs east towards Isleworth, another in Isleworth itself, another in Brentford on the stretch towards Syon, and a separate London Road in Twickenham running up from the town centre past the station. Some of those are sections of the same old main road with different postcodes; the Twickenham one is a different road altogether.
Staines Road leaves Hounslow westward past the heath and runs on out through Bedfont, while Twickenham has a Staines Road of its own heading west from Twickenham Green. Hanworth Road appears in Hounslow, in Feltham and again in Hampton. High Street is the most common of all: Hounslow Central has one, so do Brentford, Feltham and Whitton, and none of them is anywhere near the others.
Two more deserve a mention. Church Street exists in both Isleworth and Twickenham, and both are the old heart of their town, running down to a riverside church, which makes them very easy to confuse in a hurry. And the Great West Road carries hotels in Brentford, Isleworth and Hounslow, all with 'Great West Road' in the first line of the address and several miles between the furthest two.
What a postcode does and does not do
A full postcode helps enormously, because it narrows the search to a handful of addresses, and it should always be sent. But it is not a complete answer on its own. Postcodes are built for sorting post, not for finding a front door in the dark: a single code can cover both sides of a road, a long terrace, or a block with its entrance round the corner on a different street entirely.
The post town is the other half of the answer. TW3, TW4 and TW5 are Hounslow, TW7 is Isleworth, TW8 is Brentford, TW1 and TW2 are Twickenham, and TW13 and TW14 are Feltham. Writing the post town after the road name, 'London Road, Isleworth' rather than just 'London Road', removes most of the confusion before it can start.
The address that cannot be misread
The version Iris likes best has five parts. The house or flat number and the road name. The town, spelled out. The full postcode. The nearest crossing road or junction. And one landmark that anybody would recognise from a car or on foot: a pub, a church, a named parade of shops, a petrol station, a bus stop with a name.
For a flat, add how the door works. Plenty of addresses in the TW postcodes are flats above a shop, reached by a side door or an alley at the back rather than the shopfront, and many blocks have more than one entrance. 'Side door to the left of the launderette, second bell from the top' is worth more than any map pin.
Then read it back to yourself as a stranger would. If the only thing that separates your road from another with the same name is the postcode, say the town name out loud in the message as well. It feels like overkill. It is the difference between an arrival on time and a phone call from the wrong end of the borough.
Stations, and the stop that goes with the address
If she is arriving by train rather than by car, the right station matters as much as the right road. The three Hounslow stations on the Piccadilly line each serve a different end of the town, and Hounslow station on the Waterloo line is a separate stop altogether. The key to the Piccadilly stops from Boston Manor to Hounslow West sets out which one goes with which streets.
When in doubt, send the address and let Iris choose the station. She knows the difference between the London Road that the Piccadilly line serves and the one that is reached from Twickenham station, and she will tell the companion which exit to take and which way to turn.
How the booking works at a private address
Most bookings in these postcodes are at somebody's own front door rather than a hotel, which is why the address matters so much. The booking itself is the same one set out on the page for hotel rooms and private addresses: you send the address, the hour and how long, and the one check is the street and the door number. It happens once and is not repeated.
An hour at a nearby address is £250, two hours £500, and the journey out is folded into the figure you are quoted rather than added later. Her fee is dealt with face to face at the door, quietly, inside the first few minutes.
Two companions work at the ends of the borough where these repeat names bite hardest. Jasmin is anchored in Whitton, whose High Street is a long way from Hounslow's, and Tina is based three minutes from Brentford station, on the stretch where one London Road hands over to the next. Both appear on the petite page. Molly, in the middle of TW3, is the name to give Iris if the address is a flat above a shop on the High Street and the evening is going to start late.
Filed under: most of the names in this note also sit on the brunettes shortlist in the panel.