I’ve arrived in Venice – the pinnacle of my month-long Italian adventure – to celebrate my 57th birthday.
Sometime on Monday, I’ll be sitting down with fine food and an Italian wine in front of me, looking out across Venice’s Grand Canal to acknowledge my good fortune and the successes I’ve been granted in life.

I was moved, almost to tears, by my first impressions of Rome a few hours ago (that said, it may have just been the exhaustion of the previous assignment coupled with the six hour, sleepless flight I’d just taken from Ethiopia that delivered me to the Italian capital at five in the morning. But let’s go with the first option).