Fizzy Unicorn

I have a very dominating sweet tooth. I think its the molar behind the right incisor, who sits a little back from the others. It lurks in soft-palate shadows, whispering at the other teeth; a slice of that cake, a biscuit or two, oooh fizzy sweets! It was my last major barrier before going full vegan, although it turns out veganism went full-blown sweet tooth at around the same time I turned, so it didn't turn out to be much of a problem. But back in 2015, when I was taking that step from veggie to veegz, cornershop chocolate bars were my failing, particularly Snickers and Twixes. I had already discovered the M&S veggie Percy Pig sweets, so that satisfied the fruity chew craving, but the prospect of not being able to nip to the shop for a Double Decker was surprisingly powerful.

But then I told myself to stop being such a whiny little dick-splash and, besides, we’d discovered Vegos and Mini-Moos to sate the chocolate pangs, and a local deli did the absolute bestest vegan cakes so I was home and dry. Nowadays, barely four years on, there’s an embarrassment of sweet vegan riches, with tubs of non-dairy Ben and Jerrys in most supermarkets, plenty of ‘accidentally vegan’ biscuits (hobnobs, jammy dodgers, Tesco dark choc digestives, Oreos), and more fully plant-based desserts than you can shake a sugar cane at. Plus, I’ve hit the kitchen myself and discovered that vegan baking is actually quicker and easier and cheaper than regular baking and, if you get it right, is a million times better (or, at least, just as good). It is a veritably hedonistic time to be a vegan junk food junky.

Yesterday, I contemplated all this while sharing a pack of ‘Mystic Mix’ from Aldi with Hannah. That’s how far down the road we are now: vegan sweets that don’t make a song and dance about what they don’t contain (must I have the word ‘no’ repeated so many times on every piece of food I buy?), and that aren’t shaped like delicate little eco-leaves. Instead, its the fizzy fuck-it of whatever-the-hell shapes of sweets at large, and this pack is stars, moons, and squished up unicorns.

Pinched between my fingers, I hold up the unicorn and pretend I’m Harrison Ford at the end of Blade Runner, nodding sagely at the cryptic advice of his mysterious detective partner; It’s too bad she won’t live, but then again who does?. The little silver paper unicorn has become the enduring symbol of that sci-fi classic - indeed I have a poster of it in my bedroom and so it is often the first animal I see upon waking each morning. If you know your Blade Runner, you’ll know the unicorn is supposed to (sort of) represent the truth of Harrison Ford’s character Deckard - that he is, most probably, a cyborg without knowing it. But for Blade Runner scholars - and I can now put myself in this latter category having given the film a thorough going-over in my PhD thesis - the unicorn can symbolise all manner of things: freedom, escape, love, difference, fantasy. I tend to resist the Deckard-is-a-robot thing as a fairly boring interpretation of a film with much more profound potential. For me, the unicorn is an intrusion of bold and glorious life in a film where death and urban decay dominate. The unicorn is a reminder to Deckard of his own animal nature, and how such a nature is magnificent, mercurial, mesmerizing, and such majesty, when grasped, should be extended to all who feel feelings - other humans, non-human animals and, most importantly for Deckard, the robots he’s supposed to be hunting and exterminating.

The unicorn itself is probably one of our oldest and most enduring mythological beast, most likely by virtue of its brilliant simplicity; horse, but with an extra bit. My favourite unicorn examples include Swiftwind from the recent (and excellent) She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, and the unicorn from the children’s book Elidor by Alan Garner (which I consider a must-read for all ages). My favourite unicorn story comes from its Wikipedia page:

"Marco Polo described them as "scarcely smaller than elephants. They have the hair of a buffalo and feet like an elephant's. They have a single large black horn in the middle of the forehead... They have a head like a wild boar's… They spend their time by preference wallowing in mud and slime. They are very ugly brutes to look at. They are not at all such as we describe them when we relate that they let themselves be captured by virgins, but clean contrary to our notions." It is clear that Marco Polo was describing a rhinoceros." 

Unicorns symbolize purity and rarity, and can only be captured by virgins, according to legend. They often appear in hero quests at the very threshold of quest completion (a position occupied by the shining and graceful stag in latter years, see; Harry’s Patronas). They are the ultimate symbol of fantasy: hope, glory and unreality.  

Grasping this malformed fizzy unicorn, myself and my sweet tooth are mostly pleased by the manufacturer’s decision to use pectin as their gelling agent, as derived from fruit, rather than gelatin which is the industry norm. I remember first learning about gelatin when my best childhood friend Quinny told me you could get Mad Cow Disease from Fruit Pastilles because they had beef in them and I was like; whatever and he was like; totally and I was like; shut up, but he was right (well, about the beef thing; I don’t think you can contract BSE from gumdrops). The greatest irony about those M&S Percy Pigs that everyone loves so much is that, up until very recently, they all had pork gelatin in them. They literally contained pig (the recipe has changed lately so that they're all vegetarian now, but they still contain beeswax so can't be called vegan).

But of course they did. Because pork also contains pig, as does bacon, while beef contains cow, venison contains deer, and mutton contains sheep, while chicken, fish, duck and lamb don’t apparently need any euphemisms because they rank below a certain hierarchical line in the meat-eater’s mental parade. You see, for me, meat-eating involves quite a profound unicorn-level of fantasy in the twists and turns of its self-justification. This is coming from someone who gladly and happily ate meat for twenty-five years while also defining myself as an animal lover. It is a fantasy because we know, deep down, that something had to die to make that wafer-thin ham in that 99p sandwich, but we feel compelled and obligated to eat it anyway. In fact, that knowledge isn’t even deep down - its front and centre, plain to see, but we’ve established an incredible mental firewall to filter out 99% of the guilt and shame we might associate with it. Plus, meat-eating is the norm and everyone does it, so it must be OK?

Now, I don’t like to get vegan-preachy so I’ll rein myself in there (reined in like an enslaved horse, or a unicorn captured by an intrepid virgin). But, now and again, I like to indulge in heady sugar rush of my moral choice of four years ago and interrogate the whys and wherefores of animal consumption. And yes, that does involve climbing onto my high horse (or, more accurately, standing near to a beautiful meadow where my high horse/unicorn lives free and un-climbed on), but the decision to turn vegan and maintain it was not taken lightly and I believe very much in its central importance to my identity.

So, indulge me and my sour-sweetness. Deckard does have a self-realisation at the end of Blade Runner. He sees what he has been, what he could be, and which of those things is better. And he takes his little silver paper unicorn with him and, I like to think, pops to the local shops for a delicious packet of Mystic Mix.