It is a high summer evening in a small picturesque town in Southern Italy.  The place is thronged with locals taking their evening “passagiata” and holidaymakers showered and perfumed after a day on the beach and now in search of food, drink and distraction.  There is a babble of voices speaking Italian or the deep local dialect, but occasionally a word of English, French or German is heard, causing heads to turn in curiosity.  Somewhere in the distance a brass band blasts and toots its way through a tune both strange and insistently familiar.  House Martins scream overhead weaving complex patterns under a luminous purple sky, which seems almost to throb with the dying rays of the setting sun.   Among the crowd stroll a forty-something couple.  To the interested observer they are obviously from North of the Alps.    He is a big man, self-conscious of the fifty or so excess pounds he is carrying.  His skin is reddy pink, not burnt, but al...