Um, um, as you have it here the exchange just sounds pokey. I think this is one of those times when one is so besotted with a word that the action in the scene is obscured. Just give it up. . . . 
Dave
I do recall the rawlplug.
In my memory (60+ years of it) is a hollow lead cylinder perhaps a inch and a half long, wrapped in (as I recall it) some sort of brown fibrous paper resembling thinly shaved tree bark. The rawlplug would be inserted into a hole drilled in a concrete or masonry wall, and one would drive a screw into the rawlplug, expanding it and thereby compressing it against the wall of the drilled hole, thereby securing the rawlpug by (rather immense) friction so that the screw could support the weight of some object hung from it.
There were several sizes – diameters and lengths – of rawlplugs, and one would select based on the weight of the object-to-be-hung, and drill an appropriately (diameter and depth) sized hole to accommodate the rawlplug and screw. Driving the screw (by hand) could be quite difficult, especially if a too-narrow rawlplug was selected or a too-thick screw was used. Selecting the correct size rawlplug was somewhat a dark art.
The purpose of the wrapping escapes me.
I believe that I may have installed several or many.
Having said all this, I expect that rawlplug is an archaic term, as I cannot recall its use past, say, the '60s.
HTH
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Rawlpugs* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)
[attachment=0]rawlplug.png[/attachment]
?How primitive. Americans use Tapcon screws.
concretefasteners.com/anchor … index.aspx
As in, I’ll Tapcon yer ass to the wall.
When I built the present kitchen, we have now, seventeen years ago, these are what I used to hang the wall cabinets onto the walls: 
For some reason it has never occurred to me to used them elsewhere, since.
Y’ wouldn’t think a primitive backwoodsman would know about such things … would ya!? 
Well, I did build this house, all by myself with no adult supervision. And I used a s*tload of Tapcons to fasten cabinets and such to the concrete walls.
If I could figure out how to post a picture without overly wrinkling my brow, I’d show yez.
HEYYAHAB! D’y’ know how to use these
or
one of these
As a sailer of sea going boats and a builder of houses, with an artistic bent, or literary bent, I bet you’d be great at welded sculptures! 
Like Arthur Dooly!
youtube.com/watch?v=Zf3SxOzuc8U
Wow, them bluescrews are about 10 times the price of a regular screw plus rawlplug combo (which doesn’t need a special drill bit). Youse Americans is fancy, like.
Thanks all for the input (except the New Zealanders and Canadians who contributed NOTHING).
Ha! Wrinkle your brow and show us! Sounds neat. That said, I’m concerned by “a s*tload of Tapcons”. That’s a lot. Just how large is your kitchen? This does bring to mind working on job sites, wrecking out old for new, and finding walls barely held together with enough drywall screws to handle a five-story lobby. Given your parsimonious expression I find it difficult to imagine you living in Tapcon-infested digs—you don’t have a grand kitchen do you?
Dave
Unless you’ve got a newbuild here … in which case most of your internal walls will be wood-frames with plasterboard, you’ve probably got very friable brick and plaster, and I think I’d probably trust myself more with rawlplugs, than with those there new-fangled, bank account-draining “tapcons”! 
Mr X
A store selling tapcons, would that be a ‘tapconjunction’?
luvit luvit luvit!!
I tried pasting in a picture, and all I got was a lousy filename.
But, no, it’s not a “grand” kitchen. We cut all the wood for the beams and boards from our woodlot and hauled it to a local sawmill; the north, west, and half the east wall are dry-stacked concrete block coated with stack-and-bond, four inches of Styrofoam, and earth-bermed to the eaves. The south wall is mostly patio-door replacement glass. The whole thing sits on a concrete slab, which sits on six inches of styrofoam; all the concrete acts as a heat sink for heat from the sun and from the wood cookstove.
Because the walls downstairs are concrete, and so is the floor, attaching wood partitions, cabinets, bookshelves, stairs, whatever, had to be done either with lead sleeves and lags, or Tapcons. Tapcons aren’t that expensive, if you value your labor, and are more structurally secure on anything short of ¼-inch.
We poured the slab in 1979, moved in 1980, and someday we’ll finish. A grand house it ain’t–1500 square feet. More a hobbit burrow, I suspect, though the kitchen occupies half of the ground floor.
I tried dragging in a .png of the house, and also a converted PDF, but I still get only a file name. Vick-K can do it, but apparently it’s beyond my abilities. Or, possibly, not.
Verrrryyy nice!! Obviously backwoodsmen is misnomer for ‘clever buggar!’
You’ll never finish it though, cos, they do say, when a man’s home is completely finished, he has to move or else he’ll die. Don’t ask me who said it. I’ve been using it most my adult life as a reason for not finishing this or that. Or else , " Gi’me a break! I can’t do everything at once … can I." 
Can’t see anything wrong with the piccy mate
Hard to find an outlet for Tapcons over here. All in the States. I think I’ve got two, from 17 yrs. ago in a box of miscellaneous screws, in the garage.
Well done there mate 
Keep up the good work!
take care
Vic
That’s great! Looks exceptionally comfortable.
Dave
It is. Our old house was one of those sprawling sea-captain’s residences, and was, I determined, the principal reason they all frowned in their portraits. After a 30-below winter in 1977, when we burned through our annual 12 cords of wood before Patriots Day, we vowed, like Scarlett O’Hara, that we’d never be chilly again. Now we burn under two cords a year, culled from our woodlot, and that includes all heating (though the sun covers about half the load) and most cooking. Summers, there’s a beehive oven buried in the earth opening into the kitchen, and a four-hob electric cooktop and a toaster oven. Four years ago we stuck a 3.2kw PV array on the roof (that’s the dark band across the top), and now make roughly 80% of our electricity.
All this, and a big garden, makes it a bit easier living on writer/editor money for the past 30 years.
That’s what I suspected (sigh) but it doesn’t sound as though this has been onerous. You’ve certainly made good energy-saving choices. So we’re looking at the South side, yes? I was little worried about how dark it might be inside with the trees so close but then noticed the skylights. What’s with the translucent? panel just above the gutter? Soft light for living room or another project-yet-to-be-done?
Anyway, like I said, looks exceptionally comfortable!
Dave
The trees to the north are white pine and red oak; there are three apple trees to the south to shade the house in the summer and admit light during the winter. They’re kept barbered so they never block the solar panels across the roof ridge. The downstairs roof overhang is calculated to exclude any direct sun between roughly the end of May and the middle of September; but in winter, the low northern sun penetrates all the way to the back of downstairs (the upstairs skylights are shaded in the summer by the apple trees).
The translucent panel lights the attached greenhouse, where we grow winter greens and start plants for the garden (the diffused light from that greenhouse paneling prevents hotspots, which you’d get from glass). There’s also a workbench and a loo out there, which is a very nice place to sit with a notebook and exchange astonished looks with hummingbirds or grouse, depending on the season, while taking care of business, so to speak.
It’s DULUX (with a “u”, not an “a”).