I Can Hear the Cuckoo: Life in the Wilds of Wales

Product Information

Her stories of the Welsh countryside, the nature, birds, trees, animals, and the people who inhabited the small hamlet were magical. Kiran Sidhu is a freelance journalist and has written features, lifestyle and opinion pieces for The Guardian, Observer, Telegraph, The i Paper, The Independent, Metro, Woman magazine, Woman's Own and Breathe magazine.

Here, in I Can Hear the Cuckoo: Life in the Wilds of Wales, Kiran is doubly challenged to tell her painful tale of her mother’s loss during Christmas Eve and her subsequent burial on New Year’s Eve, which she can never enjoy as others; indeed, she has never enjoyed this festive season due to her father’s alcoholism during her childhood days and her mother’s demise in adulthood. You can also only bookmark a page (in this case, sometimes it came out as a double page) rather than highlighting text, making it difficult to remember what exact bits you want to mention in your review. If this is representative of how disconnected the rest of the urban population is from rural life then we will never save the environment; half the population don’t actually know what it is. Come down the travelators, exit Sainsbury's, turn right and follow the pedestrianised walkway to Crown Walk and turn right - and Coles will be right in front of you.I found this book a nice surprise, it is not a bells and whistles book ,it is about living in the country ,it has depth,humour,and an honesty that you don’t often hear,that weaves it way through the book. Yes woe is you, you lost your mum and lost contact with your blood relatives, but you know you have a loving husband, a (what sounds like a very expensive) house in a sought after part of the Welsh countryside, a second holiday home abroad, time and means to travel extensively abroad (mentions trips to New York) and a book deal for this book presumably, so things aint that bad are they Kiran?

All this aside, Sidhu finds solace in a slower pace of life, adapting to rhythms of life defined by sheep farming, the weather, the light and being accepted by another sort of family, a community who accept and embrace her. The quiet life was a real revelation to her and I loved how she interspersed her new life in Wales, with looking back over her family history and the dark times during her mothers' illness.I eventually fell into a firm routine with this book, reading only a chapter a day or so, and savouring the insights within - just mulling them over like turning a lovely pebble in my mind’s hand - and just allowing myself to empathise and feel. Her descriptions of the change in herself, enjoying nature and things that she never would have previously before her mother passed away, of the process of "living" again, rang powerful and true.