44 INVENTIONS/MARVELLOUS INVENTIONS/RONDABOUTS

The Roundabout is the Richard Feynman of road junctions, a brilliant problem solver and sexually liberal. They simultaneously reduce collisions, injuries and fatalities whilst providing an area for copulation by exhibitionists.
Many geometries were initially tried; the triangle-about wasn’t as good and the square-about was too German. None were so successful as the round.
Percy Perkins, a philosopher and town planner in Leicester, toyed with the ideas of the point-about and the line-about. His colleagues would argue that these were just the same things as roads, but Percy would draw upon the subtleties of Euclid’s Elements to demonstrate their validity. In a moment of exasperation they finally agreed to his Pentagram-about, if he promised to give the Euclidian metaphysics a rest. But little did they know that Percy was a particularly nasty Satanist bent on summoning the anti-Christ on the A607 to Melton Mowbray. The confusion, angst and rage caused by the ten-sided junction, created enormous amounts of negative energy. The Earth began to crack and Hell spawn prepared to enter our realm. Fortunately, the Nation noticed that the Mowbray pork pies were running low, due to delivery lorries getting lost in the pentagram. The county council of Leicester, in an unprecedented act of efficiency, quickly replaced the Pentagram with a Round. The Earth closed crushing the demons and normal pork pie percolation resumed.
Never underestimate the power of the pie.