My Italian Journey. Saturday 23 May. Day twelve. Verona to Milan

Already it’s hot as I walk bedside the river into the old part of Verona at around 7am. I go a different route from yesterday to the far side of the Arena, where I sit in a café and drink tea. I’ve finished my slightly disappointing novel on plague in Eyam in 1665 and am now reading D H Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover. It seems like a much more appropriate book for Italy. Indeed, Lady Chatterley travels to Venice and flirts with gondoliers on the lagoon. I’m also reading Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes, a book about “romantic science,” which emphasises how close were science and poetry at the end of the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th century. I plan to send copies to my two Italian hosts. Chicken and I find breakfast somewhere and then seek shade in the garden beside the arena. Competition for shade is intense, but we find a bench that includes only one man. As we sit there, the man leans closer and closer to Chicken—until we must leave. I propose that we cross the…