Earlies

"Weekends we'd just wash away the dirt of busy, hazy London. The night grew cold, the Thames is old ..." Peter Ackroyd's fine book on the Thames: Sacred River is the sort of work you want to keep returning to. And yet, perhaps understandably, among all the literary references etc it's missing out on the songs. There have naturally been many songs that refer to the Thames in passing. One of the most beautiful examples would be Earlies by the Trash Can Sinatras, which Alistair Fitchett has suggested we feature. It is a song I'm ashamed to say I wasn't familiar with, but I have fallen in love with it. It makes me think of days long gone when I would be on earlies too, and you'd be heading out while the world seemed to be still sleeping, and one day as I set out before sun up I saw these two fox cubs playing in the snow while their mum looked on protectively. You wouldn't have seen that round our way in the daylight ...