"No--I don't know." But she caught even as she spoke a
rat-tat-tat of the knocker, which struck her as a sign.
Again and much louder cam the
rat-tat-tat. We all gazed expectantly at the closed door.
At the
rat-tat-tat of the knocker her heart flew into her mouth.
All right, all right, Slimani couldn't nail down a place in Leicester's starting line up because of their
rat-tat-tat runner Jamie Vardy, but he wasn't a reserve in the same mould as Joselu at Stoke City.
"It's a familiar scene with a familiar tool: the gentle
rat-tat-tat on the table as you square up a dangerously thick stack of papers, still warm from the printer," Google wrote in a blog post.
Yes, a place which regularly resounds to the
rat-tat-tat of an auctioneer or the bleating of sheep has been chosen for the first performance of "a brand new musical for Northumberland".
Whatever pinpricks of cheerful updates or hopeful news were pretty much overwhelmed, the
rat-tat-tat of bullets muffling any assurance of victory at hand.
His latest--super-charged with a typically
rat-tat-tat screenplay by Oscar winner Aaron Sorkin ("The Social Network") --could bring him, as well as Universal, back into Oscar's good graces, 14 years after the studio last won with 2001's "A Beautiful Mind." What a capper to the company's ongoing box office dominance that would be.
Over the course of the week, the White House kept the fires of controversy burning with a steady
rat-tat-tat of denigrating leaks and quotes sourced to "administration officials." As reporters at Buzzfeed, Politico, the AP, and the New York Times went into a feeding frenzy, and photo editors mined their archives for unflattering photos, Secretary of State John Kerryaway on an impromptu trip to Saudi Arabiaupped the ante again by addressing the issue with reporters on his plane.
Then came the main event, beginning with a set by Songz, who emerged on a smoke-filled stage and continued the energy that preceded his set with a commanding presence and a
rat-tat-tat machine gun rap.
So it was
rat-tat-tat? No--it was Bang x 5 because the machine gun had been set on single shot mode.
War intrudes in stealthy grandmother's footsteps - while there's a military symbolism in the footsteps of the synchronised dances performed by the men at festival time (the rushcart handsomely realised at the climax of Act One), drilled like squaddies by Barrie Rutter's whistle-wielding Squire/sergeantmajor as the clogs
rat-tat-tat like Wilfred Owen's stuttering rifles.