My eyes are so big. That's what Effie says - big and blue and beautiful, like cornflowers. I like Effie. I like her wide-openness. She has lots of little white teeth and they are nice to look at. She also has long soft ginger hair. The trees outside are the same colour at the moment. Ginger trees.

But she is wrong about my eyes. They are not big. If they were big then maybe perhaps I would be able to see more, like what is on the top of the table and who is here. I know Effie is here because I can smell the sea, and because I have five pink flowers in my hair. I know Mummy is here because everything that isn't Effie smells like chutney, and we all feel warm. My new glasses are not even slightly as good as my old ones. They are silver and very round. I'm pretending that my eyes are little moons behind them. Sometimes you can only see half of the moon, and today everyone can only see half of my eyes, so they are lots like little round moons sinking into the hill.

I look underneath the table and count some legs. I think there are sixteen but my numbers after eleven are not very good. There are some hands there too. Mummy's hands are there, and so are daddy's, and I know Granny's hands because they are small and have different coloured pebbles all over the back of them. Then there are four ladies' hands that I don't know, except their nail varnish is very bright. Grandad's hands are shaking again. I know this makes mummy sad so I won't tell her. He is pressing them between his knees now, so they aren't shaking too much.

I look down at my own hands. They are little and pink in real life, but in my moon glasses they are big. Both of them fit into one of daddy's hands. Sometimes he holds all of them - my hands, and all of mummy's hands - between his.

I look towards the distant end of the table. It's dark and hard to see, but if I tip my head right my glasses make it bigger. Down there I can see some long, skinny legs. They are covered in little flower pictures. They disappear into a blue skirt. I like the little flower pictures, so I look at those for a while. Next to the flowery legs is a different pair. Those ones are man's legs. They are wearing brown trousers that come straight down, and black shoes stick out of the bottom. They look like my uncle John's legs, but I don't know because I don't see Uncle John much. He talks to Effie a lot more than he talks to me. I look at the flower pictures again. They are so tiny and so blue and so so pretty. 'Forget-me-nots' I think. Effie and me looked at pictures of those once. I probably won't forget them.

I see a hand come under the table above the man's legs. It's thick, but not nice and big like daddy's hands. This hand is hairy and soft-looking. I look at it through the top half of my silver glasses, and it seems to be touching the flower pictures, but I can't be sure. I look up, back at the table. No-one is looking at me. Everybody is talking a lot, except Granddad, who I think is eating because I can hear him.

I wriggle off my big chair and crawl between the maze of legs and feet and hands. It's dark and hot. I watch the soft, dark hand slide between the flowery knee and the edge of the skirt. I can smell the sea down this end of the table. Effie's pretty ginger hair is hanging onto her lap above the hand, curling there all soft like our cat does. She is moving her pretty, flowery leg away. When she tries to move it, I see the big fingers squeeze hard, and she doesn't move it any more.

I am getting a bit closer. My nose is too little to keep these glasses on, so I have to stop all the time to push them back up onto my face.

I stop before I bump into the man's legs. They look bigger here, long and dark like the door to mummy's bedroom at night.

I want to push his hand away from Effie, but I'm a bit frightened. I look at Effie's legs and I want to sit in between them and cuddle them and smell her seaside smell. I want her to see that I asked mummy to put the flowers she gave me in my hair. I crawl over a bit, and push my way between her legs and look up at her face.

I can see her chin from down here. And I can see the man who is touching her. He looks a lot like Uncle John. She looks very sad. Her nose is quivering. It does that when she feels sad or frightened. The man's hand is going upwards again, under the skirt this time. I tug on her skirt a bit, on the other side, and all at once she does a big scream and pushes the table hard away. Everyone goes quiet. I can't hear granddad eating now. I hide my face for a little while. Next I look up at her eyes. They look afraid and then they look calm. She smiles at me all shaky and pulls me up above the table, where I can see everyone. Everything on the table is spilled. I look at one of the ladies with the bright nail varnish. I think she saw Uncle John's hand on Effie's tights. She looks...I think the word mummy uses is '/appalled/'. When people look shocked and angry.

'John?' She says. Nobody speaks. I think Granny saw it too, because she is looking at Effie as if her wrinkly old heart might be breaking a bit, and at Uncle John like she wants to hurt him.

I look at him. His eyes are all hard and horrible-looking. His thick hands are resting on the table top.

I look at Effie's face. She is trying not to cry. I know that because her nose is quivering a lot. I push my face into her hair. I don't think anybody knows what to say.

"On the first day the Sky Dog swam in blackness all complete with the empty shape of the All Day Forever Blue and a dark punk edge piercing on the face of the void. The shadow of the Sky Dog rippled over the blue, and the soul of the first void atom split into a billion dollars, scattering across the face of the Great Nothing like Filaments of Gold. On the other end the glowing embers of creation rained down on a green place of virgin cotton, the ground a throbbing pregnancy of ore – a place without meaning or form. Unto the men that grew from the soil of the Mint Planet fell the gold dust – the spark of the idea of Possession Beyond Means. The shadow of the Sky Dog gravitated onwards, pulsing through the black and blue and finding this earth yet unmade. And the men of the earth quivered in His shadow, and knelt unto Him and raised their voices in prayer, for the men of this world were afraid. And so the Sky Dog said unto them, go forth and consume the world, for I bless it for you and all mankind, and The Scent of the Bill was given unto them to ripen their lungs to the Great Greed Endeavour, for this was to be their purpose. And mankind went forth with the vision, the eternity planted between their eyes like a third desire, and ripped once the ore from the earth…”

       Mother Redrum and the Play Gang all dossed in their white skull paint smelling like ash and bone meal runnin' under a sky that don't just forgive. Cheeks chalked hollow above the whoops and the crash against bird-bones that grew into guns with every blood-red pay check. Hot streets stickin' all hell to the souls on the pavement and those gone ghouls draining out in the gutter, with all the small men runnin' in the wake like nobody ever invented the word "funeral" for nothin'. Hood boys, Good boys running bad with the night wolves - all torn, all fast all go and shine with the spit and the drip of the bone hanging from the ripped wrist that just don't heal.

          Lizard-Land blazing lifeless, scorched sun big as God as the sky heat hangs up like a wall that'll smack so hard it'll drag your teeth with it if you run too fast. Running, looking to the next big night 'cause behind you's only black - black o'course being the only colour of this business. Children so far gone no-one remembers when business meant somethin' different to death. 'fore your eyes adjust to the black you see the white of mother, sitting there pale as the sweet white beneath the flesh that crunch so sound when you split the rest in two - there refusin' to look at you 'til you been initiated - sixteen scars up the inside wrist the rest inside and the burns so deep your soul hasn't stopped screaming - won't stop 'til you're dead yourself. Twice mean Twice dead, like all the smilers pressed screaming on poles and left in pieces to come to one with the tarmac. Splitting at the seams like some overripe fruit, unravel bursting, passed out rank from the thin hand of that green mother not so different from our own. We push that red, that pulp, that filth into our tar skin and run and run 'til it's worked so far inside we see no other colour behind our eyes.

        Walking murder, flying murder, men left staked to the hot night like monster against the face of the lord they're out for - offered up in return though no-one's pronounced ascension in some good long years. Thumping out voice that's 90 electric and 10 just damn cold - frenzy too high to take any more passion; passion's the job in front of you, the knife in hand, the red on your cheek and whatever Abispa happens to fall at the other end, the puppy bangin' so hard in recoil you don't got time to think on yo' wrists. Time only to run go. No elbow to force that hot damnation from our fingertips, we don't need no Ghetto Stars.

     Only stars we see are them that blink out of the eyes above the red smiles when we've cut 'em something good - blood to our own, transfusion thick as lost nights and that silence that chases the gunshot. 

       Mother Redrum and the Play Gang all dossed in their white skull paint smelling like ash and bone meal runnin' under a sky that don't just forgive. Cheeks chalked hollow above the whoops and the crash against bird-bones that grew into guns with every blood-red pay check. Hot streets stickin' all hell to the souls on the pavement and those gone ghouls draining out in the gutter, with all the small men runnin' in the wake like nobody ever invented the word "funeral" for nothin'. Hood boys, Good boys running bad with the night wolves - all torn, all fast all go and shine with the spit and the drip of the bone hanging from the  ripped wrist that just don't heal.  

        Lizard-Land blazing lifeless, scorched sun big as God as the sky heat hangs up like a wall that'll smack so hard it'll drag your teeth with it if you run too fast. Running, looking to the next big night 'cause behind you's only black - black o'course being the only colour of this business. Children so far gone no-one remembers when business meant somethin' different to death. 'fore your eyes adjust to the black you see the white of mother, sitting there pale as the sweet white beneath the flesh that crunch so sound when you split the rest in two - there refusin' to look at you 'til you been initiated - sixteen scars up the inside wrist the rest inside and the burns so deep your soul hasn't stopped screaming - won't stop 'til you're dead yourself. Twice mean Twice dead, like all the smilers pressed screaming on poles and left in pieces to come to one with the tarmac. Splitting at the seams like some overripe fruit, unravel bursting, passed out rank from the thin hand of that green mother not so different from our own.  We push that red, that pulp, that filth into our tar skin and run and run 'til it's worked so far inside we see no other colour behind our eyes.

       Walking murder, flying murder, men left staked to the hot night like monster against the face of the lord they're out for - offered up in return though no-one's pronounced ascension in some good long years. Thumping out voice that's 90 electric and 10 just damn cold - frenzy too high to take any more passion; passion's the job in front of you, the knife in hand, the red on your cheek and whatever Abispa happens to fall at the other end, the puppy bangin' so hard in recoil you don't got time to think on yo' wrists. Time only to run go. No elbow to force that hot damnation from our fingertips, we don't need no Ghetto Stars.  

     Only stars we see are them that blink out of the eyes above the red smiles when we've cut 'em something good - blood to our own, transfusion thick as lost nights and that silence that chases the gunshot.