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

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That's what the author had lost sight of, so it felt like Wilf was put into her life to make her appreciate the small things and pleasures of nature. 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.

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. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. Anyway, I don’t normally read bereavement memoirs, which is what I think this would be counted as, as I was more attracted by the subtitle, “Life in the Wilds of Wales” and the author’s name, which indicated some kind of South Asian heritage. Having experienced profound grief myself, her depth of perception and expression reached into my very soul. It is divided into the seasons; spring, when she and her husband moved to West Wales, summer, autumn and winter.The best parts of the book, for me, was the description of the individuals and community in a very small hamlet and the impact of the seasons. The book starts with some pictures,which entice you in and help you relate to the book as you go along. She notes it’s odd to be a Brown woman in a rural Welsh setting, but also notes that everyone’s different there and you are compelled into companionship with people with whom you have little in common; also, everything has been there for centuries and is infinite so that pales into insignificance. I don’t like reading on my tablet though I do read the Saturday newspaper on it as it saves having piles of newspaper around to recycle!

Kiran has written so movingly about her experiences, in which she takes the reader on the journey of both joy and heartache. I found it really hard to find the motivation to finish this book, as I found nothing in it compelling. But as the months wear on, Kiran starts to connect with the close-knit community she finds there; her neighbour Sarah, who shows 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; and Wilf, the farmer who eats the same supper every day, and teaches Kiran that the cuckoo arrives in April and leaves in July. I Can Hear the Cuckoo is a tender, philosophical memoir about the beauty of a microscopic life, the value of solitariness, and respecting the rhythm and timing of the earth. 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.The pain of her mother's death is terrible and she can't stop ruminating on her mother's illness, death and her family's treatment of her after her mum's death. The power of centering ourselves in the world is not to be understated and Kiran Sidhu conveys this wonderfully. 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.

So although this was more of a bereavement memoir than I expected and might be difficult to read if you’re losing someone (or comforting, as she finds her way through) there was a lot of value in it for me. This is a memoir of the move Sidhu and her husband Simon made to a small village in Wales a couple of years after the death of her mother (Sidhu was 40, her mother 62) and subsequent family fall-out. 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.Her stories of the Welsh countryside, the nature, birds, trees, animals, and the people who inhabited the small hamlet were magical. Her article about her farmer friend Wilf was the 13th most read article in The Guardian in 2021, and was made into a short film Heart Valley , directed by Christian Cargill and produced by Pulse Films.

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.and there were a lot of short chapters which meant there might be a blank left-hand page, getting you flustered. 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 eats the same supper every day, and taught Kiran that the cuckoo arrives in April and leaves in July.