I was at
work, staring across about ten metres of office space (square metres to
whatever stiffs the bosses pay rent to) and out the window at the blue sky and
whatever fun shapes the clouds were making that day, when I was pulled out of
my reverie by the man I had previously, and briefly, considered roping in to
help me chase my unicorn.
Lord only
knows what he wanted. I was already on
auto-pilot before he even opened his mouth.
The surface was paying attention, ready to help him with whatever it was
he wanted while I nestled deep within in a world of my own.
And while
he was there and I was ultimately elsewhere, I remembered my plan to dress up
as a unicorn and I started right there
and then to try and think of a way of resurrecting that plan, of overcoming the
original problem. I thought about
building robotic hind quarters (robotic Lego, of course), of somehow using a
disguised, and unfeasibly well-trained, horse, of other, non-sensical ideas
(such as cloning a whole new unicorn) until I noticed the answer was staring me
right in the face.
The man,
the one talking to my outer shell, was wearing a badge on his lapel. It was quite small but stood out because it
was considerably lighter than his black jacket.
It was a little ghost - the same shape as the ones that featured in
Pacman.
And that
got me thinking. My problem had been the
need for hind legs, that I would need a second person. But, as a ghost, I could get round this…
Whatever I used for a hind I could just cover up with a sheet and, in the dark
it might look like I was hovering. Yes,
all I would need would be a white sheet, some sort of built head, a false back
and something to prop it up and allow it to move behind me. Simple.
What a beauty of an idea. And, if
it worked, I could scare the unicorn into a panic and make her run out of the
forest and into the van. I would just
have to approach from her usual exit and keep close enough to herd her in the
right direction. I’d seen this sort of
thing on telly a million times and it always worked.
This
realisation-come-eureka! moment came on a Wednesday afternoon. I spent the Thursday and Friday evenings making the suit.
I made the
head out of papier mache. It was your
basic unicorn shape with horn and everything.
I painted the eye sockets black for the whole scary, empty effect. The false back was also made from papier
mache and was more or less just a rounded rectangle that I attached via the
shoulders to the head that I was going to wear like a helmet so the unicorn
would be a bit taller than me and therefore intimidating. The back legs I would finish in the forest
though I did attach a preparatory rod to the hind quarters. I then draped over and stuck white sheets to
the ‘back’ and to hang from the front of the head, making the ends all wavy and
long enough to reach the ground.
On the
Saturday afternoon I went to the forest to finish my ghost unicorn off by
finding the remains of my motorcycle and freeing the front wheel and its staff
and attaching them to the preparatory rod.
After a dinner of tinned curry and boiled rice, I drank a few beers for
Dutch courage and entered the forest, dressed for success.
It was a
lot less scary than I thought it might be and I made it to the clearing without
incident. Once there I got into position
and waited.
At about
midnight the unicorn appeared and I crept out making a slight “woooo” sound,
hoping to build up to a crescendo of fear.
Instead the unicorn turned, walked up to me and tore off the front of my
costume with her teeth, unfooled or fazed.
I stood,
shamed, a unicorn’s head and face above my own making my face look even redder,
as she snorted to herself and walked away.
I’d forgotten that this plan was usually used in slapstick and the
culprit was usually unmasked. Half the
time by Scooby-fucking-Doo.
No comments:
Post a Comment