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…

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 here, you need to stop until another car comes by and overtakes you, otherwise it will bring you bad luck. Well, during the match our very own black cat, Angelo, lay stretched out ominously on a cupboard right above the television with a front paw dangling down. In vain did I tell my three sons to get him the hell out of there. My three daughters were busy elsewhere, obviously. Fatally, early in the second half, Angelo then rolled over ostentatiously to face the wall. From that moment on, our fate was sealed.

The unclothed arm belonged to Gianni, our ancient but still fit-as-a-fiddle neighbour, a wifeless farmer who parades slowly up and down the dirt track past our gates in his Suzuki Samurai – or else on his prize mule that he won in a game of poker – with his bright-red Wild West neckerchief and cowboy hat. I am sure it is his way of setting out his stall in readiness for when I kick the bucket and he can make a move on Carla, who is much younger than me, let alone him.

Today he was topless, but still had the neckerchief and the hat. Beside him in the driving seat was Valentina, a youngish un-married woman who lives upstream from us towards Ravenna. She helps him with his donkeys. Her presence lifted my spirits.

‘Look! Look! A wolf!’ proclaimed Gianni. Indeed, there was a wolf bounding across the parched fields in the direction of our house behind us. ‘They love eating donkeys,’ wailed Valentina. This one might, I supposed, eat in a single sitting our own donkey Peppa, our nine chickens, our two dogs and our two cats who include the black one that lost us the World Cup.

Trying to make light of the situation, I bid farewell, saying, ‘In bocca al lupo’ (‘In the mouth of the wolf’), as they say in Italy for ‘Good luck.’ Valentina gave the standard reply: ‘Crepi!’ (‘Death to the wolf’).

And so I pressed on in the opposite direction towards the wine. In the restaurant in the village where I sometimes buy wine on tap, I said to the girls: ‘I’ve just seen a wolf.’

In her first year of freedom the wolf wandered, a bit like the poet Dante when he was banished from Florence

‘A wolf!’ they exclaimed. ‘You must never turn your back,’ said one. ‘You must stand and face them. You must shout at them. A signore from Russi whose dog was eaten told me.’

‘What should I shout? “Las Malvinas are British?!”’ Stupido inglese. We all know there are wolves out there. I hear them howling sometimes at night near the Martello tower. But this was the first time I’ve actually seen one. A few years ago, in winter, Carla saw one in the fields as she was driving the children to school.

The thing is there had been no wolves here at all since the 18th century until six years ago when a she-wolf pitched up in the pine forest behind the best bit of our beautiful beach, which has been stolen from us by highly trained nudists. This wolf had come from Camerino in the Apennines, 150 miles south of here. We know this because she was run over when six months old, brought back to life by vets, given a name – Ginevra – and in 2019 released with a radio collar. In her first year back in the wild she wandered hundreds of miles, a bit like Dante when he was banished from Florence before ending up here – or even me. Somewhere in her travels she’d found a mate and the rest is history. There are said to be about a dozen wolves now in our forest. They mostly eat fallow deer.

In the 1970s there were only about 100 wolves left in Italy, all in the high Apennines, but then in 1976 they got protected species status. There are now about 3,500. Many have come down from the mountains.

But you know what? I like the idea of these wolves among us. A she-wolf suckled the founders of Rome. I think the wolf is vital to the spirit of this place. And obviously I hope our wolves begin to find nudists more appetising than deer – and donkeys.