CLARRIE BURTON GOES IN

At quarter to three on Wednesday, Clarrie Burton walked into the Royal Hotel. Readers who followed the matter of the door in Edition 38 will understand that this sentence has been some weeks in the making. The Gazette prints it without decoration.

He ordered a lemon squash. He stayed twenty-five minutes. "He went in," says the witness, who has said it to several people since and has not once shortened the pause before "in."

A second account has Gary 'Macca' McKenzie not speaking for a while after Clarrie left. Nobody was in the bar to see this. It is circulating anyway, and if true it would be the longest silence behind that bar since Currawong Flats kicked four in the last.

What passed in those twenty-five minutes, the Gazette does not know. That Clarrie Burton chose a lemon squash rather than nothing at all, the Gazette regards as information.

THE HILUX COMES BACK, AND SO MUST EDITION 29

In Edition 29 this paper ran THE GOVERNMENT VEHICLE DOES NOT RETURN: AN INTERPRETATION. On Monday a white Hilux with district plates sat outside the clinic for fifty-five minutes. The Gazette withdraws the interpretation in full. It keeps the headline as a historical document of what was true at the time, which is the most any headline can hope for.

A woman in high-vis went in and came out with Dr Priya Sharma at the door. She then drove Patten Road slowly, stopping twice to photograph the verge. "Government vehicle" is one phrase going round. "Something about the dust" is the other. The clinic has confirmed neither, and the Gazette respects a doctor who can keep a door shut.

Mrs Gallagher of Patten Road, asked about none of this, volunteers that the doctor is very good and that the new bread tastes like something. A tea towel has appeared on her gate post. Two people have noticed. Nobody has explained it, and the Gazette declines to be the third to ask.

DEB FORSYTHE, NINE MINUTES, ONE PENCIL

Tuesday morning, Deb Forsythe rang Natasha 'Tash' Briggs. Nine minutes. Afterwards Tash wiped the same counter twice. Later Deb was seen in the Hall with the catering list open and a pencil, underlining one line.

Which line, nobody knows. The working theory at the store is that pencil means a question and pen means an answer, and Deb has been working in pen since the proofs. The Gazette will say this plainly, once: she has beaten every clock this festival has set her, and if she has found something on that list, it was there to be found.

Ray Connelly, meanwhile, parked at the Patten Road drain exit for forty minutes on Saturday while Glen Pickering spoke to him through the window. "Glen talked to him about the drain" is the entire account. Two thousand one hundred and forty dollars of PVC now has a man who sits and looks at it, which is more attention than most council works receive. On Friday he read something at the store counter, standing, start to finish. "He looked all right," says the witness, who added that he bought staples he'd bought before. Lorraine Apps did not comment, which Lorraine does as a hobby.

FOOTBALL: REDGUM HOLLOW 11.9 d. GUNBAR CREEK 7.8

Home win. Steve-o Mitchell three from the corridor. Keith Orchard said nothing after, which the town is reading in both directions at once. Thursday Keith rang; Friday two coffees went into the club rooms; forty minutes later Steve-o emerged "wrung out in a good way." Selection for the run-in is the reading. Fifty-eight through the pub, parma in thirty-one.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Madam,
I did not comment because there was nothing to comment on. A man may read at a counter. Some of us also have not forgotten the fourteenth of August, whatever this paper is busy with.
Lorraine Apps, General Store

Marge,
The drain drains. When it rains you'll see. We talked about the drain.
Glen Pickering, Patten Rd

AROUND THE DISTRICT

• Weather: no rain. Spring has arrived in the sense that the dust is warmer.
• The Patten Road verge is now being photographed by people other than the government.
• Bruce Patterson is fine.
• On the Dooley circular, the Gazette has nothing new this week and will not pretend otherwise.
• The fourteenth of August remains a date some residents mention and do not explain. See Letters.
• The Royal's lemon squash cordial is, it is understood, the same bottle as last spring. It got its use on Wednesday.