Many writers have shared their thoughts with the public:

"There is something delicious about writing the first words of a story. You never quite know where they'll take you." - Beatrix Potter

"The role of a writer is not to say what we all can say, but what we are unable to say." - Ana s Nin

"Sharing your writing, being enlarged by others' writing, is what makes you feel famous." - Gretchen Bernabei

"Writing is not an amusing occupation. It is a combination of ditch-digging, mountain-climbing, treadmill and childbirth." - Edna Ferber

"Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing." - Ben Franklin

"One must be drenched in words, literally soaked in them, to have the right ones to form themselves into the proper pattern at the right moment." - Hart Crane

"There are three rules for writing. Unfortunately, no one can agree what they are." - W. Somerset Maugham

The Town That Stole a Pub

Saturday. The football match.

Doris and Gladys sat high in the grandstand on opposite sides of the aisle, an unbroken white line running between them like a treaty neither intended to honour. They knitted while they waited for the match to begin.

Doris sat in the Blue Lake section, painted an enthusiastic shade of blue, knitting a blue scarf that was already long enough to strangle a medium-sized sheep.

Gladys, meanwhile, occupied the Red Gully section - entirely red - and was knitting a red cardigan of such alarming intensity it looked faintly aggressive.

They had known each other for decades, which only made it more impressive that a stretch of painted timber and local pride had managed to keep them at arm's length.

"I wonder if it'll be like last year?" Doris called across the aisle.

"Well, we'll only have to wait a few minutes - they're about to start," Gladys replied to Doris.

The referee's whistle shrieked. The ball was bounced. The players immediately abandoned all pretence of sport and launched into a full-scale melee.

"Yes," said Doris, not looking up from her knitting. "Just like last year."

"And the year before that," said Gladys.

They clicked their needles steadily on, as if timing the brawl.

Sunday, the heist.

Bert, long-serving publican of The Flippant Arms Hotel, woke late as usual that fateful Sunday morning.

He staggered from his caravan to the temporary pub, a transportable building, which sat on a semi-trailer - conveniently right next door.

Bert was suffering a world-class hangover from the night before. In medical terms, this condition is known as 'too many beers'.

He smacked his lips at the thought of the first cold one of the day, hair of the dog, waiting just behind those locked doors.

He pulled the key from his pocket and raised it to the lock.

Then stopped. With the key hovering in mid-air.

There were no doors.

Bert frowned.

Worse!

There was also no pub behind the doors that weren't there.

He squinted hard at the empty patch where the building had definitely been some hours earlier. Sometimes things cleared up if you focused properly. Like double vision. Or marriage.

No luck.

"Crikey. Those Red Gully bastards must've nicked it," he growled.

The transportable building had only been brought in a week earlier to serve as the pub, after the original hotel burned down. Blue Lake held the only hotel licence within fifty kilometres - a fact that annoyed the residents of nearby Red Gully beyond what most doctors would consider healthy.

Red Gully, so named because an early local farmer, Redmond 'Red'Salter, dug a huge ditch for no apparent reason, and which the locals christened 'Red's Gully' in his honour. The name stuck, becoming Red Gully as the town grew.

The good folk of the Gully firmly believed they should have the district pub because their population was bigger.

This argument gained fresh momentum when the Andersons produced triplets, pushing Red Gully ahead by a count of five and, in their opinion, establishing an undeniable legal right to the pub.

Unfortunately for them, Red Gully sat three kilometres away on the wrong side of Blue Lake, which was not actually a lake so much as a creek, and in summer more of a dusty suggestion of a creek.

Meanwhile, the proud band of Red Gully conspirators stood outside the stolen pub... arguing.

Specifically about whose job it had been to nick the key from Bert's caravan.

One after another, they tried the locked doors, pushing them thoughtfully as though persistence might somehow convince them to open. Inside, locked in and safe behind those doors, sat several kegs of ice-cold beer.

Perfectly drinkable.

Mocking them.

Several grown men openly wept.

The operation itself had been flawless.

Just before dawn - while Blue Lake slept off the celebrations from their football team's narrow win over Red Gully, the result the subject of loud dispute from the Red side - the raiders launched what they proudly called 'Operation Nick the Pub'.

The footy team put up their hands for the job, mainly because they were out for revenge and because their coach owned the largest truck.

Under the cover of darkness, and in total silence, they backed the prime mover up to the transportable building, hitched it on, disconnected the services, for which the night-vision goggles proved there worth, and then - in a heroic display of stealth rarely seen outside cattle rustling - pushed the truck and semi-trailer a safe distance from town before daring to start the engine.

The heist had been perfect.

Right up until they realised the beer was behind the doors which were still securely locked.

The few narrow windows were all fixed, so the only way to gain entry was to break one. Nobody wanted to do that because breaking in was illegal.

Several of them quietly observed that they'd successfully stolen the only pub where they couldn't get a drink.

Finally, the coach spoke up. "Anyone got Bert's phone number? Maybe we should invite him over for a beer."