8. Famous Bill novels, opening lines
*This is just a bit of silliness... but what if my favourite authors were writing about Bill Hobart? (apologies to all)*
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"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a copper in possession of a good law, must be in want of a thief to catch." Jane Austen
"You don't know about me without you have seen a telly-o-vision show by the name of Dr. Blake Mysteries, but that ain't no matter" Mark Twain
'In a little house in Ballarat there lived a policeman. Not a nasty, dirty, damp house filled with ends of cigarettes and a cabbagg-y smell, nor yet a dry, bare house with nothing in it to sit down or to eat; it was the Hobart's house, at that means comfort." J.R.R. Tolkien
"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents" grumbled Bill, lying on the rug." Louisa May Alcott
Bill was beginning to get very tired of sitting by Lawson in the office and having nothing to do; once or twice he had peeped into the report his Boss was writing, but it had no punch-ups or arrests in it. 'And what is the use of a report,' thought Bill, 'without a bit of biffo or thief taking?" Lewis Carrol
"Once there were four policemen whose names were Bill, Matthew, Charlie and Ned. This story is about something that happened to them when they were sent away from Ballarat during the war because of the Begonia Festival." C.S. Lewis
"Call me Sergeant Hobart." Herman Melville
"He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed under stare that made you think of an angry bulldog." Joseph Conrad
"All policemen, except one, get promoted." J.M. Barrie
"Now is the winter of our discontent, Made glorious summer by this son of Ballart," William Shakespere
"To Bill Hobart, she is always THE woman." Arthur Conan Doyle
"Once upon a time, when the world was young, there was a policman named Bill." Robert Heinlein
"Bill lived in the midst of the Great Victorian plains, with Lucien Blake, who was a Doctor, and Jean Blake, who was the doctor's wife." L. Frank Baum
"An hour before sunset, on the evening of the day begining of October, 1961, a policeman travelling afoot entered the little town of Ballarat." Victor Hugo
"There was no possibility of Bill walking the beat that day." Charlotte Bronte
"When Bill Hobart was thirty years old, he left his home and the lake of his home and went into the mountains of Victoria." Friedrich Nietzsche
"On an exceptionally hot evening early in January, a policeman came out of the Station where he was assigned and walked slowly, as though in hesitation, towards the Colonial Club." Fyodor Dosteyevsky
"Everyone had always said that Bill would be a policeman when he grew up, just like his father." James Baldwin
"Bill Hobart was a very unusal policeman in many ways." J.K. Rowling
"The Policeman had been working very hard all morning, spring-cleaning his desk of old reports." Kenneth Grahame
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*And you now know some of my favourite reads... maybe I can work up that Jane Austen version into something...*