We're on the waterfront with the Rightmove Roundup:

Little Venice houseboats, the island of Egyptian houses in the River Thames, a £125k bungalow on the Norfolk Broads or a $4m floater in California - you decide!

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There’s a cluster of islands down the western end of the Thames, where the loudness of London turns into the lazing of its suburbs, that I think about so often it’s a madness I haven’t actually been there. We must all go together, I insist.

I’m inviting you to the riverbanks of Shepperton and Sunbury, down where the river does its southernmost wiggle before shooting north to Windsor to visit the corgis. The whole area seems to have a gently wealthy insouciance - a blandness, even - which somehow asks more questions than it answers.

Why, for example, is there a strip of land less than 300 metres long, with 23 houses with Egyptian names on it, looking like this?

Apparently Pharoah’s Island was empty and unloved and called something involving a dog, until the Treasury gave it as a gift to Admiral Nelson after the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Napoleon was over in Egypt, on his way to attack British interests in India, when Nelson and his men barged in and stopped him.

On his return to these shores, Nelson was rewarded with a baronetcy and his very own island in the Thames for preventing the French from robbing what we had already robbed.

I mean, you can see how they kept colonialism going, can’t you? I can’t pretend to be morally above the lure of being given an island in the Thames - I’d have done terrible things to the French to be made the Pharaoh of Shepperton. Hell, life is long and I still might.

Nelson only used it for fishing, which is somewhat disappointing coming from an admiral, and no one actually built a house on the island until 1903, after it had been sold on. A Tory MP with an interest in Egyptology constructed one, called it Sphinx, and started a trend.

It’s still only accessible by boat but there are now 23 homes with individual moorings there, all with names like Osiris, Luxor, Pyramid etc. In fact there’s a million quid one for sale now, though I can’t find its name, and I’m disturbed by the sales listing cos half the photos look nice and sunny like this:

ONE: 3 bed house, Pharaoh’s Island, £995k, mega river frontage jardin

but then the other half of the photos look all dark and moody like this:

ie, a computer-generated vision of how it will appear after you demolish and rebuild, as they’ve successfully applied for planning permission already to turn it into a six-part Sam Levison drama series for HBO, that is a joke, but.

You know what I’m about to say - yes I prefer the older, wonkier version. Don’t knock it down just to gak it back up into rectilinear darkness for a sexy torture den, I beg of you. It’s already got 1750 sq ft and the best wraparound views in town. Just give it to me, as it is. I’ll cope.

Although I’ve also got my eye on this one just down the road, by which I mean just down the river, on Hamhaugh Island, which people only started living on full-time in the 1930s. Before that, Hamhaugh Island was full of fruit trees and London families going wild camping! Le sigh. Le sob. Le bring back les peaches et les plums:

TWO: 4 bed detached house, Hamhaugh Island, £1.35m:

Now that is a very cute view indeed to wake up to from your bed. Me! Yes, it is I, trying to keep my head under the water as I bob around your miniature swimming pool, having made my way up the Thames on a barge fashioned from Franco Manca boxes and Daunts tote bags. I’m quite wet actually. Would it be alright if I came in?