An open letter to Bradley Wiggins
Dear Bradley Like many MAMILS (middle aged men in Lycra) you are the reason I got back into cycling forty something years after hopping off my Raleigh Chopper when I gave up my paper round as a 16 year old.…
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[richard uridge]
Poetry, bikes, dementia care...
[richard uridge]
Poetry, bikes, dementia care...
Rich Uridge
Training company boss by day. Poet and a whole heap of other things by night. Plus the son of a mother who was killed in a care home while living with dementia.
When madmen sailed the world
How accurately will The Mercy portray Donald Crowhurst, the British yachtsman who disappeared while taking part in the Sunday Times Golden Globe race? By all accounts Colin Firth plays the leading role with his usual understated flair and captures the descent into…
Granite City
He didn’t have anywhere in particular to go. No time to be anywhere in particular. So he walked. Walked past the chain stores in the centre of town. Past the charity shops in the gaps. Past the empty shops on…
SODA FOR MILK
Where were you when the child was crying, mourning a loss not yet hers, but near, an inevitability? Were you safely tucked away in a cocoon of comfort, one where ignorance could be a justifiable excuse for your indifference? Etchings…
A telephone pole(mic)
There’s a crow sitting on the telephone wire that arcs from pole to pole from where I’m writing this at Crosshands, loops up the road to Hints and beyond to Clee Hill. The two are connected: as the crow flies…
They don’t make factories like they used to
I’ve been working in Liverpool and Manchester the last few days and it’s painful to see how two, once mighty and proud industrial cities have been brought to their knees. I’m not deceived by blue skies, Instagram filters or rose-tinted…
CLEVER TREES – Westonbirt
In the last of his current series celebrating Clever Trees Richard Uridge visits the National Arboretum at Westonbirt in Gloucestershire, England. Please note that this and other programmes in the Clever Trees series were first broadcast on BBC Radio 4. As a result they…
Nature’s Alarm Clock
I’m woken by the Dawn Chorus. Not yet the full orchestra. A solitary blackbird playing oboe (chirping is too unrefined a word for it) from the uppermost branch of the wind-stooped apple tree and the dot-dot-dot-dash-dash refrain of a wood…
CLEVER TREES – Heligan
In the penultimate programme of his five part series on Clever Trees, Richard Uridge finds a headache-inducing specimen in the Lost Gardens of Heligan. Please note that this and other programmes in the Clever Trees series were first broadcast on BBC Radio…
Sound affects
I’m sitting face to the sun like a Spring flower listening to the sounds of south Shropshire. A wedge of cold air – a thin blue arrow at the horizon and as tall as the stratosphere itself above my head…