I am an invisible mangonel.

I am an invisible mangonel.

With some surgical tubing and an ice-cream bucket, my friends and I could catapult fresh fruit from blocks away. Our neighbors would be pelted by kiwis from unknown locations.

It was a riot and we were all aflutter. Then it grew stale. So we constructed a trebuchet from some scrap wood and yarn, using my younger stepbrother as a counterweight. We flung

poo better than the monkeys, but my stepbrother was building up a serious grudge while getting all the splashback. Our merde trebuchet made our fort impervious to attack, until

The language police got wind of it. Pun intended. The odour police were called to help fold the story after a long wait for the next lines. Madame Dujardin used it as fertilizer

and since it was full of crap, her bed of budding stories flowered magnificently into a bouquet of riveting tales. There was the Swashbuckler, the Mystery, the Comedy & the Tragedy

Each a classic, told time and again. The names would change but the Comedy would always go well, the Tragedy would end in death. Mysteries were her favourite to tell, after dinner,

in the lounge with a brandy in one hand and a screwdriver in the other. The butler, whose buttling skills were second to none, said, " Sorry to butt in, but were you planning

on adding a flying buttress to the Cathedral of Butte while wearing that bustier? God forgive that I, a mere butler, should deign to question your sartorial kinks but I don't think

that my professional manner can handle an instant more of this charade!" And with that, the butler turned and left, taking only the silver service with him as severance pay.