They got a nice letter back by return of post with a cheque inside it. A cheque for a billion pounds.

The EU in Brussels had been just as excited about it as Dyspepsia and Spookie. It’s not every day you find a Monstosaurus, and if it was a good specimen then people would want to come from all over the world just to see it.

They could have a theme park in Sunderland and charge £6 admission. It would be an attraction for the town, and stop people having to go to Newcastle if they wanted to do anything interesting.

Now a billion pounds sounds an awful lot of money. But it’s not, if you’re digging up a Monstosaurus, which is going to make a very big hole. Especially if the Monstosaurus bones go under important buildings, which have to be pulled down to get them out.

The trench had gone right across Backhouse Park and was heading north. It was going to cross Ryhope Road and go up the other side into town.

Dyspepsia and Spookie went to the library for a book on how to knock down buildings, to see what they were going to need.

It turns out you need lots of scaffolding and tarpaulins, and men with ladders and great big hammers, and lorries to take the rubble away.

If you have a really big job on (as this was going to be)—then you need explosives, and bulldozers, and cranes to pick all the rubble up.

Dyspepsia posted off an order for all these things. It was best to plan ahead, or you just have people waiting around doing nothing while the things you need arrive.

Dyspepsia loved looking at the catalogues. She had never bought earthmoving equipment before.

All the machines were painted lemon yellow, but she didn’t like that colour. She liked the IKEA catalogue, where things were custard yellow and electric blue, and she thought she’d order everything in those colours instead.

Then Spookie found out they were the Swedish national colours.

They didn’t think it wise to let everyone imagine the Swedes were running things, so they chose red, white and blue instead.

They got the Art Department at Sunderland University to paint them a flag to fly over the diggings, so that everyone would know what the mess was all about. It had a picture of a Monstosaurus skull in red and white on a blue background, and Dyspepsia thought how fine and brave it looked.

Spookie had been a professor’s cat, so she was clever and could make sensible plans. She knew they’d need lots of lorries, not just for carrying rubble to the council tip, but for other purposes too. Like: carrying the Monstosaurus bones, which were going to get big.

So she and Dyspepsia ordered a fleet of fifty articulated lorries. Each lorry had ten huge wheels: four under the cab, and six under the trailer part, behind where it bends to go round corners.

Dyspepsia had the wheels painted with red, white and blue roundels, like Spitfire wings. She asked the men to paint the roundels slightly off-centre, so they’d wobble prettily when the wheels went round.

Dyspepsia looked at her fleet of ten-wheeled lorries and felt proud. People would certainly see them coming.

…to be continued.