Plus you can shelter under it in bad weather, use it to strangle your foes or effect a prison break, offer it to naked beggars as the Bible tells us, protect your modesty with it when you go out of your hotel room naked to get the paper and find yourself locked out, climb down it to rescue your beloved from cruel step-relatives, use it as a hammock, bundle it round a stick and store your sandwiches in it on a journey, sell it for cash, pee into it and allow the water to evaporate and condense on a mirror and then run down a pipe improvised out of desert grasses into your carafe to save your life on a hike, perform a tantalising burlesque behind it, blindfold your virgin bride on the approach to your haunted castle, disguise yourself as a super-fly nomadic Arab horseman, trap a rare species of butterfly and make your name in science, perform a bullfight, make friends with camp dressers, dry off after a refreshing dip in a mountain stream, attach it by ropes to a wicker basket, set a fire underneath and take off, offer it as a rich gift to tyrannical sultans, use it to prove your innocence of crimes not committed in a gaudy cape, wear it to commit crimes in a gaudy cape, allow it to moisten in a dank cellar and grow mushrooms, regale your abode with its vital hues, custom embroider it, slash it into ribbons for young maidens' dances, attempt flight without jet propulsion, solve all your wardrobe nightmares, have sex on it at muddy music festivals, imbue it with LSD and smuggle it across the border, wrap it up as a last-minute Mother's Day gift, strain new curds through it for cheese, put a belt round and fight gladiators in the arena, block droughts, train a flea circus to perform underneath it as their tent, see and be seen in it or create smoke signals when lost in the jungle. So another vote for capes.
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