Dusk darkens to a solid winter sky. A full moon hovers, waiting to shine. Standing alone on the dirty shingle bank of the Thames, Tower Bridge looming above with foreboding history, someone was watching me. I sang quietly, in the softest voice I could, keeping my mind occupied with the melody, the swish of the river, and the gentle waves that arrived, then departed, as they had for millennia.

A Roman woman picks up a delicately engraved earring she lost that morning. A sailor, on his way to embark for Jamestown in 1625 steals a last kiss from the lover he might never see again. Anne Boleyn’s barge passes through Traitor’s Gate’ on her final voyage. The feint giggles of a docker’s son at a Punch and Judy show on the 1930’s shore. The glint of a sliver shard discarded or perhaps thrown into the river for luck by a hopeful Royal Mint worker. The Thames. Moody, beautiful, historic.

And then the songs. Like the river, they speak to me, not just because they are some of the best songs ever written, but because I longed to sing them. Turn the lights off, look out at the moon, and think about those you love, loved, and lost.