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

Product Information

What I enjoyed was the style of writing and the discoveries she made while she was living this more rural, isolated life. And so we get lovely descriptions of the Welsh countryside, the lovely Welsh people, lovely Welsh kindness, the lovely Welsh animals, the lovely Welsh seasons (do you see a pattern here? This was like medicine - to be taken in small quantities, to help illuminate thoughts and feelings within me that I never would give myself a chance to experience. Oh, this reminds me I need to be careful to spot NG books like this – luckily I haven’t had any so far but I don’t want to read anything I can’t send to Kindle. 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.

The book is a tapestry of two different worlds intertwined, capturing the extremities of life itself. She chooses fresh air, an auditorium of silence and the purity of the natural world – and soon arrives in Cellan, a small, remote village nestled in the Welsh valleys. I also didn’t notice it was one of those NetGalley books that’s only available through the Shelf app, which makes for a less smooth reading experience: more on that later. Biography: 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.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. This book offers a gentle reminder of the true meaning of life and our place in the natural world around us.

The film won Best Documentary Short Film at Tribeca Film Festival 2022, beating over 7,000 submissions and 20 finalists.are tantamount to a country person writing a book about moving to London and being awestruck by the public transport network and the number of restaurants available. Healing happens, and acceptance that the expected ways are not always the best ones, especially around Christmas, the time her mother passed away, which now is the most painful season.

It made her stop to take time to look around and notice the small things, and just the simple pleasure of a walk in nature would take her out of herself and focus on what she saw. They speak in cliche philosophical soundbites, and feel to me as though they are lifted from various Enid Blyton farm stories rather than real life. After reading this memoir, do watch Heart Valley, an award-winning short documentary on the life of Wilf Davies, a 73-year-old farmer who eats the same food for more than 10 years and has never left country life for city life in his lifetime. but she quickly discovers a sense of belonging in the small, close-knit community she finds there; her neighbour Sarah, who teaches her how to sledge when the winter snow arrives; Jane, a 70-year-old woman who lives at the top of a mountain with three dogs and four alpacas with an inspiring attitude for life; and Wilf, the farmer who taught Kiran that the cuckoo arrives in April and leaves in July. I was irritated by the endless tautological paragraphs which I would have expected an editor to expunge.After hearing an interview on Radio 4 I had high hopes but ultimately this is a self-absorbed, mawkish and pretty patronising read. The power of centering ourselves in the world is not to be understated and Kiran Sidhu conveys this wonderfully. The author’s descriptions of grief were quite well written but for the other aspects of her life that the book covers I wanted to tell her to just get a grip. Having experienced profound grief myself, her depth of perception and expression reached into my very soul.

Time is the Houdini of the metaphysical world; it escapes through the back door of our lives, although we never really felt it enter. It's about grief, finding beauty in nature, creating a meaningful life through appreciation and joy in the simple things in life and the company of good people.Reading this book on my tablet through the NetGalley shelf app was a slightly tricky job, as it came out in double-spread pages in an odd font, with the next page accessed by swiping downwards, so you had to go left – right – down diagonally to the left – right, etc.