The sun was setting on the first day of spring and I felt unusually happy as I fed the donkey. Winter, along with the fog and all the rest of it, had gone at last. But then from somewhere near my right ear I heard a small whining sound that for a moment I did not recognise. It was the first mosquito of the year. And I remembered how biblical it all gets round here under the Italian sun, insect-wise.

Sometimes I wish I’d stayed up in the Apennines where there were no mosquitoes, just giant wasps

There are a whole host of insects and other things, real, imagined, and in between, that prey on the bodies and minds of me, my wife Carla and our six children. By May, there will be so many mosquitoes on active service that sitting on the terrace with a bottle of chilled whatever to contemplate the blood-red sun go down is quite out of the question. We live a mile from the coast near Ravenna, which was the last capital of the Western Roman Empire and for centuries the headquarters of its Adriatic fleet. The remains of the antico porto, where that fleet was based, lie high and dry six miles inland from our house. The area was once a delta of swampy rivers and lagoons.

I fantasise about using part of the house for a bed and breakfast as........

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