Dante’s Beach, Ravenna

It was midnight, more or less, and my middle daughter, Magdalena, 18, said with all the untroubled bravado of youth: ‘Let’s go and find il rospo!’

She was at the wheel of the Land Rover Defender and we were involved in a nocturnal driving lesson. Rospo is Italian for toad. And if you say ‘Dio Rospo’ (‘Toad God’), that’s blasphemy, so as a good Catholic she doesn’t, whereas, as a bad one, I do because it is funny, as God would surely agree.

We drove on slowly, passing half a dozen or so parked cars with solitary men inside them

We drove on slowly, passing half a dozen or so parked cars with solitary men inside them

‘Il rospo’ is our family nickname for the fat man with the eyes of a dead person who emerges after dark in the village thanks to the theft of part of our beautiful beach by highly trained nudists. Nudism, whatever holier-than-thou nudists claim, involves creatures like il rospo and one of their favourite extra-curricular activities, as I’ve said before, is dogging.

Normally, il rospo parks his big white 4×4 to watch and wait at the start of the narrow little road, running parallel to the dense pine forest next to the sea, where all the action takes place. We wanted to give him the middle finger on behalf of the living. Tonight, however, there was no sign of him there.

Driving with Magdalena........

© The Spectator