Alchemy
Riding the west windHarnessed by sinking sunshineRainbows ARE the gold
![[richard uridge]](https://i0.wp.com/richarduridge.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Untitled-design-1.png?fit=1000%2C1000&ssl=1)
[richard uridge]
Poetry, bikes, dementia care...
[richard uridge]
Poetry, bikes, dementia care...
Read onAlchemy
Still Life
Shackled by time slippers shuffledStooped to the high-backed seatQueen throned, grey crown ruffledPrince and Princess at her feet The Prince takes a marbled handBut a child’s touch cannot reach beyondTheir birth to a foreign land To retrieve lost memories fond In her realm time and place…
Please make your selection…
Guinness, lager, shandy, coke(You can go your own way)Wisecracks, quips and sexist jokes(Go your own way)“This chair taken? No feel free!”(You can call it another lonely day)“Your shout Dave I need a pee.” Please make your selection… Fleetwood Mac then Britney Spears(Sometimes I run)Singles, doubles,…
Nature’s fountain pen
For most of the year the field is like a sheet of writing paper covered with invisible ink. Words indivisible from the page. Blank every morning save for brown-blot molehills. But the overnight snow has rendered the lines for all to see. All at once.…
A Shropshire Symphony – winter
Taking pictures forces you to look at the world more carefully. You see things through the viewfinder that you might miss with the naked eye. And yet more detail resolves itself in the taken image. So it is with recording sounds. You hear things through…
Vespula vulgaris
Paper lantern queenYour subjects crawl on their kneesNo sting in the sun. For me the soundtrack of the first lockdown was the bumblebees feasting on the nectar in the blossom of our cherry trees. It’s a different kind of buzz this time round as we…
Autumn
Colour-eating cloudWest wind-stacked silver strataFading green to black I love the easy discipline of Haiku. Just three lines: the first of five syllables; the second of seven; and the third back to five. It’s the sort of poetry you can write anywhere anytime you have…
A Shropshire Symphony – spring
From early morning geese to late night owls via a blackbird serenading from his perch in our cherry tree, all these natural sounds were recorded over the four days of Easter in our garden near Ludlow. To my way of thinking there is little or…
Mother’s Day
Dear Mum You didn’t like people making a fuss of you. So you weren’t a big fan of Mother’s Day. Before it all became what you disdainfully called Americanised, I do remember me and my sister bringing you breakfast in bed. Dad was in on the…
Social distancing
Sheila is 85 years old. Sheila has dementia. Shelia lives at Ridgeway Lodge care home. At night she curls herself into ball and sleeps under a single sheet. Like an ammonite in a museum cupboard. Visitors need a PIN number to get in. Just four…
Unfinished memories
I’ve just found a notebook in which Sheila May Marshall started writing down her childhood memories. It might be written for my sister and I although not explicitly so. The first entry reads: “Your mother walked eight miles a day to and from school. “Grandad…
“You can see the dags” – my top ten Strava ride names
Let’s face it cyclists aren’t a very creative bunch. Or certainly not if the names they give their rides on Strava are anything to go by. A quick and dirty tally of my activity feed over the past few days looks something like this… Morning…