The Volunteer enters
Let loose your senses
Release your defences, of navigation
Nicotine, amber and creamy stout
Blackcurrant, cider, scallywags about
Mingling in with the inn crowd
Sing along, now sing along for Tom Dowd
Unsteadily stepping on the pebble shore
Pause, for a wee, under the balustrade
Your head is already beginning to thicken
Slowly breathing
Breathing completely clean
Seaside air
In the distance, listen
The screams of delight
Shivering and shaken
Shaken out of the moonlight
Beach night, fight or flight
Starlight, summer sites
Listen to the screams
The screams of delight
Branscombe Beer
Plymouth Gin
Sip the gin and tonic
Only human
This is no Sputnik, Brojnic
Back in this hotel room
You’ve been here before
Eiderdown, radio, worn-out floor
No one rings tonight, no one ever does
Words arise from below
Conversing, wandering, escaping
Philandering along the promenade
Planning permission is applied for
To turn it into flats
The locals complain - out loud
But they have not, have they
They have never stayed here
Never crossed the threshold
Into this ancient decaying
Dilapidated space
Some say they’re business folk that run it
In it for what they can get out
But In fact that’s why I stay here
Not to be distracted
But to feel the man, to really feel
It’s closing time at the hotel
But not at the Volunteer
Close this page slowly I ask
For Lyme is a certified provider
Of localised folklore
