Oh, to have been a fly on the wall when the permits were requested for this one. “Alright, Mister Furze, everything seems to be in order here. You are…” (adjusts reading glasses)…”going to fling everything from a brick, to a flaming ball, to an entire car using a homemade counterweight trebuchet in a field outside of town. Is that correct?”
You know that at least three other people in that office heard those words, stopped what they were doing, and made sure that they were feeling well. Outside of pumpkin-chunking season here in the States, that’s a worrying thought. The trebuchet is a product of the Middle Ages, and a counterweight trebuchet in those days was the equivalent of a main battle tank rolling up with the driver flying the one-fingered salute out of a wide-open hatch…what were you going to do unless you had your own trebuchet to respond in kind? Pretty much nothing. But in 2020, where pure unadulterated fear is known the second somebody coughs, a trebuchet is fairly quaint. Use weight to move weight? Okay, that’s simple mathematics. But how effective is it? Well..how badly do you need the engine out of a Peugeot 406?
Just think…somebody actually signed off on this.
I suspect the other people in the office would have dropped what they were doing and started listening as soon as a co-worker said “Mr. Furze”, if any of his other previous antics have required a permit from the same office.