Dante’s Beach, Ravenna

I was at the wheel of the Land Rover Defender on the mile-long dirt track that leads to the main road from our house and I was still feeling existentially disturbed by our defeat at the hands of the awful Argies.

Dusk was falling and I just wanted to get into the village, buy a couple of litres of red and get back without running into a police roadblock. There are only four inhabited houses on our L-shaped dirt track, which at the other end peters out into the fields near the sea, and so there is rarely any traffic at all. But in front of me a small white car had stopped. A man’s naked arm protruding from the passenger window waved me to a halt. I pulled up alongside, irritated…

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Even my Italian wife, Carla, a hot-blooded Latino and devout Catholic, who supports whoever England are playing, especially if Catholic, had confessed that the Argies were ‘cockroaches and sheep ticks’ for the disgraceful way that they had cheated. But she also said: ‘You inglesi are such coglioni’ (testicles literally, assholes actually). And who could disagree?

But let me tell you why we lost. If a black cat crosses the road in front of your car round........

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