Gone in 45 minutes

TheLastStraw: I know it's the chicken nuggets most people worry about. And now I see that Eric Schlosser, author of Fast Food Nation, claims the strawberry milkshakes have 59 different ingredients. But what I'd like to find out is what McDonald's puts in its balloons.

In my experience, they always explode about 45 minutes after you leave the restaurant. Maybe the ones we've had were just over-inflated. But McDonald's calculates everything else, so it must have worked out the optimum balloon-life, based on the need to get your children back soon. I look forward to Schlosser's eventual exposé.

The truth is, I resent McDonald's balloons for another reason. We were just off the train in Verona recently, for example, and the kids were dangerously hungry. So when they saw the golden arches right outside the station, resistance was futile. And all right, it filled a gap. But we then had to tour Verona with our offspring holding inflatable advertisements of the fact that, in a country with arguably the world's greatest cuisine, their parents bought them Happy Meals. Rub our faces in it, McDonald's, why don't you.

One of the things all tourists have to do in Verona, where Shakespeare set Romeo and Juliet, is visit the Casa di Giulietta. This is the 14th-century house of the real-life Capulet family, complete with the balcony where the famous lovers met.

Except of course that the balcony is a fraud, because Romeo and Juliet are fictional characters who have no known basis in real events. But this point is glossed over in the house's literature, and millions of visitors happily co-operate with the ruse.

The courtyard entrance has become a shrine for lovers, who leave romantic messages on its walls, sometimes using aerosol cans. The really romantic ones prefer paper notes, stuck on with pieces of chewing gum. Unfortunately, Verona's killjoy conservationists want to replace the old-fashioned notes with an electronic display system, to which people could text messages, minus the saliva-covered gum. Some people have no sense of romance.

The courtyard has a bronze statue of Juliet, looking like a less busty version of Grafton Street's Molly Malone. She doesn't have Molly's dignity, however, because it is a custom for tourists to be photographed holding her in such a way that, if she were alive and well brought-up, would force her to remove the offending hands and smack their owners in the teeth.

As responsible visitors, we didn't deface the walls or add to the shine on Juliet's right bosom. But we did visit the house, which is a fine example of early Verona architecture. Even as we stood inside the doorway, I was struck by the incredibly loud noise that an over-inflated McDonald's balloon makes when it bursts in a 14th-century building. My six-year-old son Patrick was struck too. The combination of shock and loss provoked tears, and I had to explain to him again that it was in the nature of balloons to burst, eventually, after about 45 minutes. He was very brave about it.

Up on the first floor, we just had to take a picture of his sister Roisin on the balcony. So I asked her to pose like the daughter of a wealthy pre-Renaissance Italian, and she did her best, considering she's only seven and was holding a McDonald's balloon. I don't know why it seemed a good idea. When Roisin is Juliet's age, barring a dramatic change in fortunes, she still won't have a balcony. And if she does, her father will be patrolling it nightly with a shotgun, to prevent any Shakespearian scenarios developing.

"O Romeo, Romeo. Wherefore art thou Romeo? Come out with your hands up!" I'll be saying. Of course, a real-life Romeo might point out that, in Elizabethan English, "wherefore" didn't mean "where"; it meant "why". He might explain that this is wherefore, in the famous scene, Juliet is not inquiring about his location, merely regretting that he bears the name of her father's enemies. But then again, with a shotgun pointed at him, he might not be so smart.

According to scholars, Romeo and Juliet isn't a classical tragedy at all, because the characters are not destroyed by their own flaws. Some even suggest it's a farce with a sad ending; although you could also argue it has a happy ending, in that the lovers' deaths cause the families to make peace. I don't know. I only know that when we were in the bedroom - Bang! - Roisin's balloon exploded too, causing renewed grief. We went hence, as Shakespeare wrote, "to have more talk of these sad things".

And if any good came from the whole sorry saga, it was that the people of Verona no longer knew we'd been to McDonald's.