The most shameful thing I’ve ever done
From our UK edition
Dante’s Beach, Ravenna It is raining at last, thank God, and the sound of thunder cascades across the heavens like some kind of conversation. This infernally hot summer is drawing to a close. The swallows left last week for sub-Saharan Africa, the bee-eaters the week before. Even the nudists – well, most of them – are going away, back to Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Bologna and Milan. Yet I dread, as we slide inexorably once more towards winter, not the ghost-town reality of a tourist village out of season, but the deep cold and the dense fog to come like the ghost of the sea. I always wonder at this time of year: will I be granted one more summer? How did it ever happen that I ended up here in Italy like a gypsy or an imam as the father of six children?
