Spaghetti In My Hair

About the Book

   When Clare Stimpson turns-up in Modena, a beautiful city in Emilia-Romagna in northern Italy, to teach English, little does she know that she will fall in love with the country and its people, and stay there for the next four years. Clare was inspired by her mother, whose stories of her hitchhiking adventures in Sicily in 1949, fired her imagination. In the mid 1970’s she decides to leave her teaching job in London and taste the ‘dolce vita’ for herself.

   ‘Spaghetti in my Hair’ tells the story of the Italian characters that Clare met. It explores some of the magical cities of Emilia-Romagna and other stunning regions of Italy. The book touches on Italian family life, the food and habits of the nation and the unstable, political atmosphere of the time. Returning to England but feeling nostalgic for the Italian experience, Clare returns to teach E.F.L. in the sublime coastal resort of San Remo on the Ligurian Riviera. This eventually leads her back to Modena, a place she has grown to know and love. Interwoven throughout the book are stories of adventures and mishaps experienced by Clare and her friends and family. The central part of the story tells the tale of an epic journey across Italy in a small red V.W. called Doris when Clare and three other girls experience many hilarious adventures whilst driving south as far as Gargano in the region of Puglia.

   The final part of the story goes back in time to 1949 when Clare’s intrepid mother and her friend, hitchhiked to Sicily – a no-man’s land in those days. She recounts the tales that her mother passed down to her, including a memorable stay in jail, when the two English girls were mistaken for accomplices of the notorious bandit, Giuliano Salvatore.

   Spaghetti recipes included – add a large glass of wine or two!

About the Author

     ‘Spaghetti in my Hair’ is Clare Stimpson’s first travelogue, which is set in three parts. ‘The Early days’ tells the story of her life in Modena between the years 1974 –1978. Part II ‘Italy Revisited’ describes living in San Remo, holidaying in various resorts with a character from part one, and travelling through Italy in a V.W. called Doris with three girls to the Gargano in Puglia. The final part ‘Enigmatic Italy’, describes how Clare was influenced by her mother who hitch-hiked to Sicily in 1949

As a young girl, Clare was brought-up on stories of her mother’s adventures in Italy and determined that one day, she too, would live in that land of dreams

       In 1970, before setting foot on Italian soil, Clare trained to be an art teacher at Shoreditch Teacher’s Training College in Surrey. She taught pottery for a year in a west London comprehensive, before fleeing in relief to Italy to teach E.F.L. or English as a Foreign Language to a more receptive audience. On return to England she retrained to teach design and technology in Winchester and has been employed in many teaching posts. Her present job involves teaching art and English GCSE.

      Clare has always enjoyed writing and used to entertain her sisters with bedtime stories that she invented spontaneously. She has always been fascinated by travel and at teacher training college, studied geography alongside art. As a teenager she kept various holiday journals and at the tender age of thirteen had a poem about autumn published in the ‘Liverpool Echo’.

     Clare now lives in Southampton with her husband Gordon and three sons Joe, Alex and Jamie. She describes herself as being obsessed with Italy and feels that her Italian experience has played an enormous part in shaping her life.