One conspiracy theory I will not entertain, even in jest, is the Shakespeare authorship question. The original advocate for someone else being the author died in a lunatic asylum (Delia Bacon) and an early advocate for the Earl of Oxford was an eccentric unfortunately but perhaps approximately named Looney.

What saddens and appalls me is that some of the greatest Shakespearean actors of the past half century have subscribed to such theories. Among them is Sir Kenneth Branagh, whose Henry V thirty years ago was just the first of at least 5 films of the plays he was involved with.

http://www.to-be-or-not-to-be.com/william-shakespeare-authorship-2.htm

On the plane over to Italy, unable to sleep, I saw a lot of films. One of them, All Is True, stars Sir Kenneth Branagh as Shakespeare on his retirement and uneasy resumption of family life in Stratford. The film addresses various questions about the life of Shakespeare and Elizabethan theatre in a way which asserts Shakespeare to undoubtedly be the author.

Branagh is an actor, and actors deal in make believe. But does this depiction mean he has abandoned the Oxford authorship tomfoolery? I hope so.

I like to stir people up by being provocative. I get ample ammunition from my frequent purchases of ‘alternative news’ publications (ie the looney conspiracy stuff about UFOs, vaccinations, Chem trails, 9/11, Obama’s citizenship etc).

For example, this past July during the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, I was calling it the ‘moon hoax’. And I don’t like needles so I am quite comfortable being irresponsible and saying that I am an anti-vaxxer, although I think most of my shots, flu aside, are up to date. (You can tell I am not a parent.)

But I think I have an irrefutable argument that the moon landings were real and that there is no Roswell UFO stashed away in Area 51, and that argument is Donald Trump’s twitter account.

Donald Trump has generally exhibited the discretion of a parrot, and you would expect that if there was any truth to a moon hoax or Roswell cover up, he would have told us.

You might argue that whilst he is President, the US government is not going to tell him all its secrets for fear that he will do exactly that. Good point. However, Trump has never let the facts get in the way of a good story or tweet, so if he believes or suspects something, he will say so anyway. Hence his recent retweet about the Clinton body count when Epstein died in gaol, and his early advocacy of the Birther theory.

Same goes for 9/11 inside job. Trump would say so if he thought it was the case. JFK assassination… I’m kind of waiting for him to add it to the Clinton body count conspiracy theory.

Vaccinations causing autism etc? I don’t think Trump will prove or disprove that one. It’s a hippy theory and the only thing he likes about hippies is free love. Plus I doubt the US surgeon general is in a position to keep secrets from the public on vaccinations, unless it is somehow tied to the moon hoax….

The Emperor Vespasian was the son of a tax collector. This explains a lot.

As a form of revenue collection, he introduced a urinal tax. When his son Titus objected, according to his biographer Suetonius, Vespasian grabbed a coin from the pile of revenue from this tax and held it under his son’s nose, exclaiming ‘Doesn’t this money smell good’.

Titus got the point. He didn’t repeal the urinal tax when he became emperor.

Fast forward some 1950 years to now. Italy has very few public toilets. And those that it does have, mostly at railway stations, are pay toilets.

This, more even than the Colosseum, is the Flavian dynasty’s lasting legacy to Italian tourism.

Perhaps the toilets are kept in a better state this way. And if I am caught short after drinking a litre of mineral water or a couple of ‘calici’ of wine over lunch, I am not going to mind paying a euro to make my personal comment on the economy.

But what I do mind is that I do like being able to wander on foot far from my hotel, and to eat and drink whenever I feel like it. The remarkable lack of public toilets can make for a very uncomfortable time during such touristy meanderings.

I think this is my main grumble about Italy, as I near the end of my trip. To put it crudely, there are not even that many lemon trees to water, although I get a sneaking suspicion as to why there are so many lime trees in central Rome….

Crepuscolo is the Italian word for twilight or dusk. I never knew that til I asked google translate just now. Just like ‘calice’, it’s not a word in my Italian vocabulary.

Right now I’m sitting out the front of my hotel in Treviso enjoying the crepuscolo. You need to be a certain distance away from the equator to experience twilight- we get it in Melbourne but not in Brisbane, nor in Sydney or Perth. I’m sinking a beer whilst I wait for the hotel buffet to open and thinking that my work here is done, soon I will be home enjoying the dusk on my front porch in Avondale Heights.

At moments like this, I am reminded that life is good.

I’ve now been abroad and on the road for over three weeks and I am starting to feel pretty tired and homesick. Not counting day trips to Asti and Magenta, Treviso is my ninth stop on this trip. I’ve seen as much new stuff as I can handle for a while and I am getting tired of all the pasta and pizza, and need some old fashioned Australian junk food.

After walking around great distances each day I am footsore and weary. I still have a day left on my euro rail pass but I can’t find the energy to use it to hop on a train to Venice from Treviso station.

Two more sleeps and I’m on a plane home. I find I’m looking forward to it.

As an aside, I brought eight books over with me in my luggage to read on the train or in those hours when my legs will not carry me any further and it is still too early for dinner (that is, the restaurants are yet to open). I’ve read and jettisoned all eight, so today, just when my weariness means I need books more, I have had to go and buy from the limited English language selection at the bookshop at Treviso station (I’m not going to bother making the effort to read in Italian unless it’s Moravia or Calvino).

Last night I did dinner with a legion of my cousins and their families at Charlott, a Charlie Chaplin themed pizza restaurant which is in the centre of Cusignana, my father’s home village (and therefore my own ancestral home).

Great to see my cousins again, and to meet one of the latest additions to the extended family.

What impressed me about Charlott is that it has the largest pizza menu, in terms of different pizzas to choose, I have ever seen anywhere. I was too busy catching up with the kinfolk to count them, but there surely were over a hundred options on the menu. Like wow, and in my own village too!

The province of Treviso is my ancestral homeland, on my father’s side. The medieval city with its walls, moat and canals has a unique charm. I spent three hours this morning walking through the city.

The Gate of St Thomas on the north side of the city was completed in 1518, and the cathedral is the latest version of something going back to late Roman times. The restaurant I lunched in yesterday is in a building from the 1400s. And for a while there, Treviso was an independent city state before it voluntarily chose to join the Venetian republic.

This really is a world away from Melbourne suburbia, where finding a horseshoe from a milk cart buried under 50 years of bitumen is the most historically significant encounter you are likely to have.

Not far from my hotel in Milan is an area filled with well designed new skyscrapers. This 25 storey building has been designed as an urban vertical forest, covered in shrubs and bushes equal to what would cover an entire hectare of land.

Aside from this, a lot of other buildings appear to have enormous rooftop gardens. Milan seems to attract the best talent and ideas in design and innovation.

Magenta is a town on the railway line just outside Milan. It is also the location of the Wallaby Australian Pub.

I visited yesterday and had a beer and a chat with the owner, an Italian chap who has owned it since 2007 (it’s been there since 1994) and has fond memories of drinking Guinness at the Hero of Waterloo whilst in Sydney on a holiday many years ago.

The beer was a Coopers Red label, and he mentioned that some of the locals dislike the yeast precipitate in the bottle. I suggested he adopt the Australian practice of rolling the stubby, as is traditional with Coopers. He said it was impossible to get Fosters anymore and I said I did not mind because Coopers was now the only major Australian brewery not owned by Asahi or Kirin.

As you can see, there were outlines of kangaroos or wallabies around the place, and he had made a sincere attempt to get other paraphernalia like a slouch hat, a didgeridoo and a big picture of the Olgas.

Kangaroo burger is also on the menu.

Compared to what I saw in Rome, this is a far more committed attempt at an Australian Bar. And it has a nice pub atmosphere too.

But as Milan is so like Melbourne, could I expect less here? Milan is an excellent choice as s sister city.

This is my third day in Milan and I must say that I love this place. It is a living city, where the modern sits perfectly with the past, ie the fascist era, Risorgimento, renaissance and medieval buildings.

In many ways, it is similar to but classier than my home city Melbourne, which has a lot of grand Victorian buildings amidst Art Deco and contemporary skyscrapers etc, combined with grand parks. Milan is also the sporting capital of Italy and is criss crossed by an extensive tram network.

But the level of sophistication and quality of style and design – quite apart from the history – lifts it to another level.

The only thing missing is ready access to the sea.