THE main attraction at the Easter procession here is a mythical creature of soundly non-Christian origin.
It's a bloody great dragon.
It really is quite a great thing, legged by about 50 volunteers and flanked by various handlers and blokes setting off heaps of wonderful crackers.
They are often flat out mustering enough legs.
They were advertising desperately again this year and I almost fronted.
Almost, but not quite, even though I am a qualified animal leg from a previous procession many years ago.
But that was for an elephant.
A very creative friend had concocted the beast of wire and stiffened calico and very effective big eyes made of sunglass-lenses.
It was beautifully embellished with fabrics and doilies to bring it up to a standard somewhere between an Indian festival and the Sydney Mardi Gras.
It had a manoeuvrable trunk and a bugle and room inside for four idiots, one of whom was me as the rear-right legs.
We piled in and took our place in the queue and awaited starter's orders.
Wearying of standing we eventually sat, rendering the beast into something like a resting hovercraft.
Time dragged and one of the freaks inside the now almost airless carcass lit up what I can only describe as a very large cigarette of jazz-tobacco.
This seemed a harmless enough development for a festival-day but it did cause a little consternation for the elephant's handler, an ornately dressed young lady, who became concerned at the suspicious smoke issuing from the beast's ears.
She madly waved incense sticks around to mask the effect.
Then we were underway.
Rarely could such a confused pachyderm have attempted to walk a straight line.
Our fore-brain couldn't actually see and our co-ordination was questionable.
Our attempts at noble trumpeting were outrageous fart-noises.
People narrowly avoided being trampled but on we swayed.
The great discovery was when the left-rear legs spilled some water during a drink and the nearby crowd shrieked and giggled at the beast apparently urinating.
This became a feature and we staggered on, lurching from the crowd on one side to the other, piddling and farting to great acclaim every 25 metres.
Some wag yelled out to stand on one leg and, after a pause we all lifted one leg to reduce the total from eight to four.
It was a trick so pathetic it was hilarious and on we trundled.
It was fabulous fun.
Marvellous as the dragon is, we were a pretty hard act to follow.
