Penzance at night, sickly lamposts, the dock inn, hunched seagulls, broken bottles of rum, blood and cigarette butts on granite, the black sea.  voices singing from long rock beach, devilish silhouettes dance around the light of a fire.  Closer along the cold howling beach, to find drunken men wearing baseball caps, dancing around burning driftwood, their torsos smudged with patriotic tattoos, 3 lions, teardrops and doves. With bloodshot eyes and lips tight round cans of K cider,  they dance and sing fiercely into the flames, until the moon dissolved into the sea, where something moves in the water.

A mermaid watches from the shallows, she has travelled far, drawn by the songs of the hooligans.  But alas, her curiosity and the ebbing tide have brought her too close to the shore.  The men are ready.  Her mercury tail flaps helplessly as they drag her onto the sand by her golden hair.  She lies helpless, as they dance around their catch, alabaster breasts soon drenched in cider and urine.  They huddle naked, grunting as they take turns.  The mermaid yelps like a seal cub.  Who is she calling for? Her helpless father, the sea king, who could command the Kraken to her rescue? Or the treacherous sirens to tempt the men to their deaths? Or the Narwhales to bare her away on their ivory tusks?  None can hear her now. Drifting away into the darkness of the beach, all is lost to the sound of the sea.

The morning sun drenches the beach in a red glow.  Smoke rises from the embers, the men lie passed out amongst seaweed and driftwood. Floating face down in a rock pool by the shoreline, amongst, seaweed, empty cans and oil, is the limp, silver-white body of the mermaid, swaying like a flower, whiter than the surf.