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." - Anaïs 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

Willy Faces Up To It

IT MIGHT have been okay to call him Willy the Kid in the days when the West was as wild as a bronco with a burr under its tail. But he hadn’t aged well. Willy the Ugly Old Bugger would be closer to the truth now.

When he moseyed into the Last Chance saloon, One-Eyed Kate hadn’t seen him since the Indians were bad. She gave him a professional once-over and told him in her diplomatic way that he had a head like a half-sucked Aspro.

Willy took a look in the mirror in the public bar and had to admit she was right. Now he knew why the missus kept him hidden whenever they had visitors.

If he was going to hang around the place, Kate said, he should do something about his looks. He was scaring off her paying customers.

Another glance in the mirror confirmed her helpful observation. Accepting that he’d never win a gun-slinger beauty pageant, he noted that his head, used mainly to keep his ears apart, was his biggest drawback. Rather than go to the expense of a full body make-over, it’d be cheaper to hide the offensive area, using an internationally approved method.

Dead Man’s Gulch had been hearing a lot about a light-fingered character name of Kelly who was driving Australian coppers up the wall pinching things from stagecoach passengers.

While doing this, Kelly wore the usual stuff those employed in the hold-up trade did - fancy shirt, baggy trousers, big-calibre shooter. It was his headgear that was different. An iron pot knocked up out of frying pans, it looked like a bread bin with a slot cut in it to allow the wearer to see what was going on around him.

After prolonged negotiations with Ned Kelly Enterprises Limited, Willy was granted sole Dead Man’s Gulch production rights. Now all he had to do was build a prototype, splash on a coat of anti-rust and he’d have an all-weather cover-up for his crude countenance.

For help in the manufacturing process he went to his sidekick, Doc Hallitosis, drinker, out-of-work dentist, handy with a shooting iron and good at thieving.

“Got a job for you, Doc,” Willy said. “Frying pans. As many as you can pinch.”

Doc, promised a snort of cactus juice for every frying pan he came up with, knocked off so many they could have held a cookathon.

That night he joined Willy in some noisy panel-beating that kept Dry Gulch citizens awake while a copy of the Kelly-brand tin-can headgear was hammered out.

Willy tried on the finished product and although he thought it improved his looks, he wasn’t happy with its weight. “Weighs a ton,” he whinged.

Actually it was nowhere near a ton, just heavy.

He continued to complain. “Makes me look like a canned sausage.”

Doc said if he was a canned sausage they’d better not go to a barbecue.

Not that they had a barbecue planned for that afternoon. Where they went was to the local bank, intending to make a cash withdrawal from accounts they didn’t have.

On their arrival at the bank Willy tied his faithful, patient steed Brutus to a hitching post. Brutus had become faithful and patient from waiting outside banks.

Doc Hallitosis didn’t need a hitching post, he’d lost his steed to a fellow swindler in a poker game.

He and Willy bandy-legged it together into the bank waving shooters and calling out that if they didn’t get everything, including the manager’s cut lunch, somebody was going to finish up full of holes.

A teller pointed at Willy in his Kelly-brand headgear: “Cop this bloke,” he chortled. “He’s either going to a fancy dress party as a barbecued canned sausage or he’s auditioning for a Bunnings hardware commercial.”

The teller was still laughing when he pressed the alarm buzzer.

Willy thought this was unkind treatment of bank customers. Losing any immediate plans for a cash withdrawal, he headed for the door. Once outside he jumped on his faithful, patient steed Brutus who took off like a longhorn steer in a stampede, passing the horseless Doc who was galloping up the road a short head in front of a posse of bank employees.

The river didn’t stop Willy’s faithful, patient steed Brutus. It plunged in.

The middle of a river is no place to fall off a horse but Willy managed to do it where the closest land was straight down. He spent some time on the bottom during which he had visions of undertakers, wooden boxes and a plot on Boot Hill.

It was only when he managed to struggle out of the heavy stuff on his head that he was able to claw his way back to the surface and dog-paddle to the riverbank. There he mounted the faithful and patient Brutus. Together they squelched their way to the ranch where Willy nursed a nasty headache caused by the pinging noise bullets made when hitting the metal.

When he dried out he set about designing replacement headgear for that which now rested on the river bottom. Frying pans were too heavy; he experimented with cloth. It was lighter and quieter, if not very bullet-proof.

There was no shortage of cloth. One-Eyed Kate often forgot to wear her knickers home.

Willy got out his bowie knife, cut a piece out of an extra-large knicker leg, and sewed on strings to loop around the ears.

You beauty. He’d invented the world’s first face mask.

Forget robbing banks. Now all he had to do was wait for a pandemic, corner the face mask market and count the money as it rolled in.