The house was owned by a housing association called Patchwork, who would peel off years' worth of wallpaper (six layers, hanging off the walls) and patch up the damp plaster beneath.
Ideally, aim for a pancake the size of a dinner plate with, at its centre, the thickness of a Compeed bunion plaster.
Dip it in bleach, plaster it in make-up and times it by two.
By enabling us to consume conspicuously and by introducing café culture to the birthplace of the industrial revolution, it seemed for a while that things could only get better, but of course this proved to be a mere sticking plaster, simply delaying the crisis that loomed on the horizon.
I used to wear this purple trouser-suit … and there's one photograph of me, on a hospital bed with my legs covered in plaster, and I'm wearing a red-and-white poncho.
Tobacco firms tend to plaster their own electronic products with terrifying health warnings that, some observers suspect, are an attempt cynically to play up fears of vaping's potential harm and put switchers off.
Wand warned that loans from the ECB would be more sticking plaster and unlikely to satisfy investors.
"We had drawings, and there was enough of the plaster modelling left to take mouldings, so we decided to do it properly," says Simon Thomas, CEO of the Hippodrome Casino now.
On the one hand, he specified timber "from the saw" and plaster "from the float", while on the other he was constantly on site, breathing down his workers' necks, insisting that the ends of steel beams be carefully stripped and twisted into impossibly elaborate decorative curls.
In a far corner, a woman with a round plaster covering a dry, pinkly scrubbed cheek weeps.
An X-ray taken that afternoon showed a fracture and I spent that summer with my arm in plaster.
