For a reality check on what is being done to the world’s children, I suggest you read the annual report of UNICEF, THE STATE OF THE WORLD’S CHILDREN 2005: Childhood Under Threat ( http://www.unicef.org/sowc05/english/index.html). The 2005 edition was released yesterday, and the link leads to a “highlights” page with further links to sections or to the full report. The full report is 164 pages and is a 6.3 MB download in pdf format.

The report is painful reading, but a valuable reminder that real children are being destroyed daily around the world. There may be some horrific stories on the Archive, but reality is AS horrific, or more so.

An older UNICEF report, Profiting from Abuse: An investigation into the sexual exploitation of our children, can be downloaded from the UNICEF web site as well. It paints a picture of the real sexual abuse of children that makes the fictional world of “Larry” seem almost mild by comparison.

Despite being asked to read ‘Larry’ by the instigator of the story in order to proffer comments, I’ve so far failed to do so because I’m frightened. Although I’m sometimes the author of my own dark tales, such as perhaps the rather similar ‘The Institution’, I’m rarely ready to experience other people’s nightmares, especially when they are based on fact.

My emotions have still not fully recovered from hearing about the ‘Monster of Lahore’, about which my own eponymous tale was, similarly to 'Larry', cathartic, and watching the waking nightmare of the horrific culmination and aftermath of the Beslan siege live on television. I’m therefore not ready to read in depth about the real woes of other children in this allegedly better and more humane modern age.

Please, Jesus and Paolo, therefore forgive me for being such a coward but I’m not going to read ‘Larry’ until I summon up sufficient courage to do so, probably aided by hefty consumption of Christmas wine. I’ll instead continue to bury my mind in the supposedly less civilised past and simply write my next chapter of ‘Nero’ and the one-off tale, based in ancient Egypt, that I’m spinning off from the episode.

Meanwhile, I sadly suppose that many children will continue to suffer worldwide, even in Bush’s America.

PUEROS