TC and I were indeed standing beneath the famous projecting platform last weekend, surrounded by hundreds of flash-popping tourists, as along with the Milngavie pipe band and a Highland country dancing team, plus various other selected Scots, we were guests of honour at the annual Veronese festival 'Tocati' which exuberantly celebrates national street games. This year it was Scotland's turn.

I was about to take a photo of the ornate wherefore-art-thou balcony when TC shook his head. "They only put it here a hundred years ago cos there wisna one there at all. They canna even prove it was where the Capulets lived either. So no Juliet and no balcony. The whole thing's a scam."

None the less, I was moved. All along the entrance to the Casa di Guiletta, thousands of love notes had been stuck to the walls; hundreds of people had graffitied their names; others wrote on torn-out pages and stuck them to the stone with chewing gum: "TI AMO PAOLA"; "TI-PO + JO-JO FOREVER". Names from all over the world. There were so many love notes on so many colours of paper that the corridor looked like it was covered in autumn leaves. As I stood there staring, a piece of paper drifted through the air and landed at my feet. "SNOOPY und HOMER" it said. I thought it poetic and beautiful.

Over the heads of the swarming crowds, I glimpsed a bronze statue of Juliet. Tourists took turns posing for photos with their right hand cupping her left breast as it is believed to bring luck in love. Love was everywhere, I wanted to cop a feel of Juliet, but TC was not up for it.

"Bloody tourists," he said. "C'mon." He wanted to rejoin the other Scottish guests and so led me to the Piazzi Signori, a beautiful quad of 15th century buildings with a statue of Dante in the centre – that had been renamed Piazza Scotsesse for the festival. There, before me, the Milngavie pipe band started up and TC pronounced: "Makes ye proud eh?"

Try as I could to rise to noble feelings, I was hounded by doubts. Had not the resurrection of the pipes happened only to serve the Victorian taste for exotic, rustic holidays in Scotland? Had not the kilt been artificially constructed at exactly the same time as Juliet's balcony?

It came to me that as ambassadors of Scottish culture, TC and I were in an ironic situation: parading our slightly fake Scottish history in a town that had a slightly fake Italian one.

But as the drone of the pipes shook the renaissance walls and the old pre-conditioned pride started to stir inside me I thought, "What the hell." Who cares if Scottishness was invented by the English, or if Juliet never had a balcony? All it takes is for enough people to believe in something for it to become real, for it to become History.

I couldn't tell this to TC though, as he would have been mortally offended, and I, perhaps mortally wounded. His Sgian Dubh may have turned out to be horribly real.