Hunky Dory Read Online Free

something of yourself. One day when I’m Sir Dorian, and famous for my work on dinosaurs, they’ll look back and feel ashamed of the way they treated me.
    Of course I might be famous as a Crime Scene Investigator. That’s another career I’m thinking of pursuing. I reckon I’d be good at it, as I find it most interesting on television when they examine the contents of people’s stomachs or collect maggots and bugs that have taken up residence inside dead bodies. The Microdot says I am gruesome. She says it is totally disgusting and would make any normal person feel sick, but that is just her point of view. Mine happens to be different.
    Anyway, if I’m peculiar so is she. She screamed her head off the other day, all because there was a spider walking across her bedroom ceiling. She screeched, “Get rid of it, get rid of it!”
    I’ve told her about a hundred times that spiders are perfectly pleasant and harmless creatures, just going about their business.
    â€œWhat d’you think they’re going to do, bite you?”
    She screeched that they might fall on top of her while she was in bed. They might even get into the bed.
    â€œThey could get down my nightdress!”
    How peculiar is that? Fantasising about spiders getting down her nightdress. What makes her think any self-respecting spider would want to? I can’t understand it when girls start freaking out at the sight of anything with multiple legs. The Herb came across a centipede the other day; she didn’t freak. But then the Herb is different.
    I spent the whole afternoon excavating. I’ve only got till the end of the month, then the builders are coming in to build Dad’s new workshop, so I’m trying to get as much done as I can. Aaron and the Herb are helping me: they are my official assistants. I am doing my best to train them, but I have to say it is uphill work. They don’t seem able to grasp the fact that there is more to excavating than simply picking up a trowel and digging as fast as you can. I’ve told them, you have to dig slowly. You have to dig carefully. You have to sift . Then if you find anything, you have to label it, and say where
    it was, like how far down, and how far in. The Herb asked me today exactly what it was we were hoping to discover. Before I could give a more scholarly reply, Aaron had jumped in and yelled, “Dinosaur bones!”
    â€œWhat, in Warrington Crescent?” said the Herb.
    Aaron said why not. They’d have stamped about in Warrington Crescent same as they did anywhere else.
    â€œIn the back garden ?”
    â€œYou gotta remember,” said Aaron, “it was all primeval swamp in them days. That’s what it still is, deep down. Then the bones kind of work their way up. Prob’ly quite near the surface, some of ’em. I wouldn’t be surprised if we came across the odd one now and again.”
    I said, “I would.” This is exactly what I mean about Aaron always claiming to know everything when in fact he knows nothing. I said, “I’d be very surprised.”
    â€œSo what are we searching for?” demanded the Herb.
    I had to explain that it wasn’t dinosaur bones, which in any case would be fossils by now, but just whatever turned up. So far I have discovered:
    An old coin dating from 1936 A piece of broken china (a shard, as we professionals call it) A small blue bottle (probably contained poison) A rusty penknife, almost certainly antique.
    They are all cleaned up and properly labelled. I showed them to my assistants, thinking they would be impressed—thinkingthey might actually learn something—but the Herb just giggled and Aaron said, “Is that it?”
    I said, “This is history, this is.”
    â€œSome history,” said Aaron.
    The Herb giggled again. Everything’s always a big joke with her; she finds it very difficult to take things seriously. “You never know,”