rat-a-tat-tat

Camp Pike was its own literal boom town with the crack of bolt-action rifle fire, the rat-a-tat-tat staccato of machine guns sending bullets down range, the blast of grenades, all crowned by the rumble of artillery rounds sent tearing through the sky to earth-shattering impact.

Nearby I hear a rat-a-tat-tat boom as street cops in undershirt hurl stones at a target and scream when one of them hits the gonging bull s-eye.

Birds avoid the cat, go rat-a-tat-tat, look sad in a cage or are 'f-r-e-e, which is a much better life, I'm sure you'll agree.' The illustrations of the birds have the feel of stained glass windows, with sections coloured in glowing colours, hinting at feathers rather than depicting them, and it works very well.

First the scene is set, in circuitous fashion, by Mr Styles (Munyevu again), the proprietor of a photographic studio that doesn't simply produce snaps but is "a strong room of dreams" - not least those of the radiant, beaming owner who describes in colourful, painterly fashion his previous existence toiling in a Ford car plant, and the dreams and aspirations of those who now rat-a-tat-tat at the studio door.

/ 'Rat-a-tat-tat hurts!' And my mommy is not a drum...

My mother screamed "what did you do that for?" and he replied "keep down!, keep down!" and there followed the rat-a-tat-tat of a German plane's machine-gun.

"How did you knock on the door," asks Lee, answering the rat-a-tat-tat, to canned audience laughter.

Scientists have figured out how woodpeckers can rat-a-tat-tat a tree 12,000 times a day at speeds up to 7 meters per second without a headache.

"Mr Robertson made a comment to someone to his left about the gun and, as he did so, he heard the gun being fired from the direction of the bureau, a 'rapid rat-a-tat-tat' lasting for two or three seconds."

The visitors took 46 minutes to make the breakthrough - Les Davies setting up Chris Seargeant - but it was rat-a-tat-tat from that point.