Product Description
by Niall Allsop (Author)
In July 2008 Niall Allsop and his wife Kay returned to the UK after their third holiday in Calabria near the small hill-top town of Santa Severina; the plan was to return the following summer. Ten weeks later, their left-hand drive Clio bursting at the seams, they left their home in south-west England and headed for the coast on the first leg of their journey back to Calabria to live.Scratching the toe of Italy continues the story from where Stumbling through Italy left off and explains how their move to Italy came about, the logistics of the move itself and what happened next.It is the story of two adventurous pensioners adapting to being the only English-speaking people in a small Calabrian town, of the new friends they made and the home they created there.Scratching the toe of Italy is a heart-warming chronicle of perseverance and optimism, of the struggle to come to grips with a new language and a new culture, of starting each day with the certain knowledge that it will not turn out as expected.
Author Biography
Niall Allsop was born and educated in Belfast, Northern Ireland, but began his working life as a primary school teacher in London and in 1971 took up his first headship. He left teaching in 1981 to pursue a career as a freelance photo-journalist specialising in the UK's inland waterways and wrote extensively in this field both as a contributor to several national magazines and later as author of a number of related titles, one of which, in a fourth edition, remains in print. By the early '90s he was a graphic designer and the in-house designer for a photographic publishing house in Manchester before becoming a freelance graphic designer based in the south-west of England. In September 2008 - the point at which 'Scratching the toe of Italy' begins - he and his wife, Kay, moved to Calabria, the toe of Italy, where they enjoy a sort of retirement and where they continue to struggle daily with the language in a small hilltop town where they are the only English-speaking people. Niall Allsop is also the author of 'Stumbling through Italy: Tales of Tuscany, Sicily, Sardinia, Apulia, Calabria and places in-between' and 'Keeping up with the Lawrences: Sicily, Sea and Sardinia revisited'
