So here is my first piece, ‘A Quiet Drink At The Happy Unicorn’. I used the following discoveries from my trip.
The Unicorn from the t-shirt
The builders
The bread bin flower pot
A wall with the graffiti painted over.
A Quiet Drink At The Happy Unicorn
The cafe never made any sense to me.
The sign outside declared ‘The Happy Unicorn’ in a gold and jazzy font. Inside, each distressed wooden table had a bread bin containing decorative giant daisies on top. The walls were pastel pink. On a marble counter sat a council of garish cupcakes, some so laden with icing and cream they were nearly double the size of the others.
I walked past the cafe every morning at eight thirty. This is a busy time for anyone who sells coffee, and The Happy Unicorn always had a queue stretching down the street. But these were not hipsters with thick, cloudlike beards, or Mums in floral dresses. This crowd dressed in work boots and hi vis jackets. Tattoos of football crests faded on their arms. One even had a sledgehammer leaning against his foot.
The Happy Unicorn was not their only choice. There is even a greasy spoon round the corner. But on a daily basis boulder like men walked out with steaming travel mugs. I asked one why he went there, but his only response was a swear word.
Those men filled my thoughts. I sat at work pretending to type, wondering what they thought of the daisies in the breadbin. One day it got too much.
The front was not my target. I knew from a previous shortcut attempt that down a gloomy corridor was a back entrance. A rusty door with peeling paint, and lichen hugging the hinges. Running there took only five minutes of my lunch break. If I kept the same pace on my return journey, then I had a full twenty minutes to unlock the mystery. On the brick wall near the entrance was a thin coat of beige paint. It provided a futile cover over a row of black symbol, each displaying a theme of spikes and circles.
I pushed on the handle, expecting resistance, and the end of my quest. The door screamed from lack of use, and refused to budge more than a foot. But a sliver of the room within revealed itself.
I squeezed myself through into a gloomy kitchen. Huge plastic bottles sat on a silver workstation. Each held gallons of a creamy pink fluid, silver sparkles caught in the gloop.
Machines stuttered. Something sniffled.
A pale horse stood in the centre of the kitchen. One twisted horn in the lightest shade of yellow stuck out from a crisp white forehead. Tubes ran into silver cups attached to a snowy underbelly.
And although that horn looked ice pick dangerous, and four silver hooves threatened kicks with the power of dynamite, the animal shuffled on the spot, head pointed down.
Perhaps I should have run away. Called animal welfare, or even the police. But I had to dip a finger around the rim of a bottle, where a little of milk dribbles out, and touch it to my lips. I had to.
That tiny taste made the world roll around my head, and turned the thought of returning to work the silliest thought of all. And even after the door to the kitchen opened, and the cafe owner pointed at me, adorned in her green apron with unicorn trim, I did not care.
When the builder charged in, and held his sledgehammer aloft, I thought only of how excited he must be for his morning coffee.
