�y��vlog

But there are the other rats, the ones that live a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs beneath floorboards or kitchen skirtings.

Lucky enough to be helping out with the scene painting as a callow art student during my summer holidays in 1958 and 1959, I was shown how to use a broad brush, how to paint trompe l'oeil skirtings, architraves and door panels, and how to handle 20ft-tall canvas flats which were painted backstage while the cast for next week's play rehearsed the script.

This is all the more necessary, since while the bells, batteries, relays, pushes, etc., are easily got at for examination and repair, the wires, when once laid, are not so easily examined, and it entails a great deal of trouble to pull up floor boards, to remove skirtings etc., in order to be able to overhaul and replace defective wires or joints.

Mouldings for panelling, cornices, skirtings, &c., are cut by revolving cutters or chisels, filed to any desired shape and case-hardened.

The walls of the staircase are covered with a sort of plaster called stucco, but closely resembling road-scrapings: the skirtings are of pitch-pine, the balusters of the same material.