Sure sign I’m coming down with a cold. The last couple of days I’ve had a headache, then yesterday woke up with a raging sore throat. For me, these are the early warning signs of a cold brewing. Then by early evening I’d developed sneezing and a snotty nose. Lovely.
Sneezing is really annoying. I had a fit of several sneezes on the trot and could barely draw breath between them. Apparently the force of a sneeze can reach 40mph. You can’t control a sneeze, it’ll happen without mercy. The signals to the brain causes a reflex in the face, nose and chest, which is what causes you to inhale. Then there’s the explosive expellation.
Clearly, I’m currently sneezing as I’m coming down with a cold, but there are other reasons that cause people to sneeze. My daughter sneezes every time she goes out in the sunshine.
There are many suggested remedies for colds and sneezing such as drinking hot teas, eating spicy food, using a facial steam bath. Then there’s the medication that contains paracetamol and other active ingredients.
I’m generally a “let it flow” kind of person. My observational experience has shown that those who try to stave off the symptoms by taking medicines tend to have their colds hanging around a lot longer. By not taking anything my cold is generally over and done with in a couple of days. C tends to take medication and his colds can go on for over a week, sometimes two.
As annoying as it was to have an uncontrollable sneezing fit during a zoom meeting, I know it’ll be over with in a day or so. Just hope I can get through the next full day of virtual #bellringing without too much bother.🤧
Cheating somewhat I know, but that’s how I remember Double Norwich Court Bob Major, by reciting First, Treble Bob, Near, Full, Far, Repeat. The purists amongst ringers will probably tell me that’s absolutely heinous, but it works for me.
I’ve never really been able to learn methods the “right way”. When I first started to learn methods, some 39 years ago, I would usually be presented with a table with 3 columns, the work of the bell, what happens at a bob and what happens next. No explaination. No mention of place bells, no clues to the method construction. I just learnt the work by rote. That’s just how it was done where we were. The locals didn’t know any different, so they couldn’t teach any different.
Now, fast forward many, many years and I’m trying to learn more complex methods and even, on the rare occasion trying to splice a few of them, and I really struggle. When I learn a new method I try my hardest to learn the start of each place bell but I don’t seem to be able to break it up that way. I learn the whole of the blue line by sort of rythmically reciting the piece of work. Given that generally I tend to ring round the front to middle bells (depending on how many), I have no idea what the back bells ststart with. I look at the work of the 2 and that, to me, is where the methods starts. When I ring the same method from a different bell, it’s like learning a whole new method all over again, although by the time I get to what I can actually recognise as where the 2nd starts, I can relax a bit. This does make it rather difficult to be able to just join in on any bell, or to ring on higher numbers as trying to recite a whole blue line can be difficult to remember.
This is probably the biggest thing that sets me back with ringing.
Not so long ago, I was about to participate in a virtual #bellringing session and the instructions were sent through via email and said that the other learner in my session wanted to practice splicing all the right place methods. I had absolutely no idea what that meant. When someone says to me that I’m (insert bell number of your choice here) place bell, they may as well be talking Martian in all but the very basic of methods.
Now, I’m a grown up, and you could argue that I should be able to go away and find out these things for myself and try to learn and understand what all this jargon means. I’ve tried. I’ve picked up books that claim to explain how to learn methods and within about a paragraph or two, I’ve switched off. Maybe I’m just not being receptive enough to the information that is being presented to me. Maybe it’s my own self-sabotage that says that I’ll never understand it anyway, so why bother trying. I’ve tried writing methods out, by place bells, to break them down to their constituent parts, but once the blue line “clicks” it all merges in to one long line and I have a job undoing it all again.
There are some methods that I can now recognise certain place bells, but that’s only because I’ve been ringing those methods for a very long time, and had the opportuntity to ring them from different bells often enough. However, as someone who can easily ring Cambridge Surprise Major, Royal and Maximus, I have no idea what any of the bells above 6th place does to start with. If I were to ring one of those bells, I would need to learn its start all over again and get to a place, or a pattern, in the method that I was familiar with.
For where I am in my ringing career right now, using cheats like First, Treble Bob, Near, Full, Far, Repeat for Double Norwich, and Two and a Penny, One and Tuppence for Erin works, but I guess I’ll have to put more effort in if I’m ever going to crack splicing the Standard Eight!
Its simple, right? You just stick a # in front of a word, job done. But what’s the point of the #?
The # is there for you to link your post, in whatever medium that might be, to a word that may connect you with others who might be interested in the same topic. It can help your post reach a myriad of different audiences. The hashtag became popular with Twitter, but you can use it on just about any social media platform. It means that anyone looking for a particular topic can search using the hashtag and find other sites and content of interest. Very useful if you are wanting to get a message out or share information with the masses. According to some sources you can get 45% more likes and 67% more comments on your content by using the right hashtag strategy.
I use a very small number of hashtags on my posts about bellringing, mainly because some social media platforms have a limit on the number of characters you can use, but mainly because I’m rubbish at thinking on synonyms, you know, those other words that are related to the one you’re using. For example, I use #bellringing a lot when I post about any bellringing activity, or sharing information. For some reason it took me ages to connect #bells, #bellringers, #ringing, #campanology. Search these hashtags and it opens up another world of bell related sites, some not so relevant to the type of bellringing I do, but means the posts has the potential to reach a whole new audience.
Up until recently, I’ve never really used a hashtag as a search function to find other like minded topics, but as I’ve got more into using social media, I’m finding out all sorts of useful tips. There’s a whole business made out of teaching people how to hashtag properly. I took the plunge a while back and purchased an e-book on how to make the most of hashtags, but only because it was going super cheap. And, I have to say, I’ve learned quite a bit from it.
The particular e-book I purchased was more specifically focussed on Instagram, the least of the main social media platforms that I’m familiar with but the ideas can be used across the other platforms too. I look after 3 different Instagram accounts, including my personal one. I had them open as I was going through the e-book and putting the suggestions into play immediately as I was reading through it.
I edited the profiles for each account to make them more appealing and relevant so that it instantly gives a viewer the information they need about the account. I looked at the hashtags that were suitable for the size of each account based on the number of followers each account already had. Using hashtags relating to topics where there are too many followers already means that our messages could get lost in amongst all the noise. I thought about the keywords that users might be searching for when they’re trying to find our information. I then used those words to search sites where the ideal audiences would also be looking at. I followed a number of those, then looked at the kind of hashtags they were using and jotted down any that I thought might be useful.
Then its about the engagement. Once you’ve found the top accounts in your topic of interest, by liking and commenting on their accounts regularly, this will help your visability too, amongst their followers.
I’ve made a list of all the hashtags that I think would be useful for each of the accounts I look after and now that I’m starting to use them, I’ll be able to look at the analytics to see how they are helping reach wider engagement.
How often do we get an opportunity to just sit and listen, I mean REALLY listen to the sounds around us?
Both C and I were sat out our respective desks in the study, going about our business when it suddenly hit my ears there there was silence. Neither of us were speaking. At the time neither of us was hammering our keyboards or frantically clicking a mouse. But then I noticed the non-silence which actually became quite loud.
I could hear the birds twittering in the back garden, as clear as a bell. The hum from the fan on C’s PC, continual hum. The wall clock ticking, so loudly too that it beggers belief that sometimes you barely notice it at all. There was an occasional mouse click as one or other of us scrolled up whatever it was we were reading on the screen. There was a throat clearing after a glug of water. There was a chair squeaking under the pressure of shifting weight. There was an airplane outside on its way to, or from, who knows where. There was pen scratching on paper as I was making notes. There was a belly rumble and an over emphasised exhalation.
Within the space of somewhere between 5 to 10 minutes there were all these sounds surrounding me, but there was silence. Peaceful, gratifying, restorative. All of these amazing sounds that I might have missed had the radio in the kitchen been on, or had I been hammering away at documents or emails, or people talking.
Silence can provide us with so many benefits if we choose to allow them into our lives.
It can allow us to concentrate and focus, which apparently can be lost if the sound is over 80 decibels. Obviously the writer of that point has never been to a #bellringing practice where concentration is required despite the noise of the bells.
It can allow our minds to be more creative. Some eminent scientists did their best creative work after a period of solitude and quietness.
It can allow us to discover how we may improve our lives when attention is given to self awareness practices. Taking time to self reflect can help figure out what and where we want to be.
It can help relax us and reduce stress levels if we allow a period of silence.
It can affect our ability to learn. The more noise we are exposed to the worse we perform and find it harder to concentrate.
Doing nothing and remaining silent can increase productivity of new brain cells, which in turn supports greater productivity as much as tenfold.
Silence can help cultivate calmness and peacefulness when you regularly practice silence and patience.
If you are able to, I invite you to sit somewhere comfortable and just be silent for even just a few moments. Make a note of all the things that you can hear in the silence. You’ll be surprised how much surround sound there is.
Rituals are good for giving us the power to keep us grounded, stabilised and focused. They can provide a sense of confidence and security and can help alleviate grief and stress and can increase happiness. Doing things on a regular basis gives us a sense of familiarity in a world when there is so much going on around us.
Sundays in this house is very ritualistic. Fortunately for the two of us we can still go #bellringing on our own, so up and out first thing. When we get back home we split the chores. Something we agreed from the start is that I would either cook Sunday lunch or do the ironing but not both. He picked cooking so I get landed with the ironing.
Ironing is not my favourite pastime so I need some distraction in order to get through it. Generally this comes in the form of a vat of coffee, using a huge mug I’ve had for years. Because I don’t have breakfasts on Sundays by the time we get home from ringing I’m hungry, so have a snack of some sort with my coffee.
Then I’ll put a film or Netflix series on so that I can watch that whilst I’m ironing but it can’t be anything that requires too much concentration otherwise I’d burn his shirts. He’s busy cooking a Sunday roast by this point.
Then, after lunch I prepare my breakfasts and lunches for the working week ahead. This week I’ve made Biscoff pancakes for breakfasts 😋 and I’ll have ham rolls for lunch.
Every other week we have a family Skype and catch up with everyone, and sometimes I have either a meeting or virtual #bellringing session in the early evening.
Then its time to settle down. Often we’ll have cheese and crackers for supper, sometimes accompanied by a glass of Baileys. There’s usually a dodgy old film or TV show on that we’ll settle in to before wrapping myself in my sofa blanket and having a nap.
The simple pleasures in life and the familiarity of ritual allows me to rest and recover ready for the week ahead. Once I’m under my sofa blanket, do not disturb!
When I get asked to give talks its one of the scariest things and takes me on a roller coaster ride.
My first question is why have they asked me? And the cynic in me replies “because they need to fill a slot and you’re an easy ask“. But maybe, just maybe, its because its a topic I know about and the person that’s asked knows that I can do a half decent job of it.
My first real worry then is what on earth have I got to say that anyone would want to listen to. I’m no one special. I haven’t done anything earth shattering brilliant or enlightening or entertaining. No one is going to want to hear me spout on about xyz when there are far more interesting and entertaining people who could do it.
Then there’s the “what am I actually going to talk about“. The latest ask hasn’t been too specific yet so I’ve asked the question. I could redo a talk I’ve given on a specific topic before, so I won’t have to prepare anything new, or do they want something different?
Then there’s the “how long have I got”? This is where, once I’ve written my talk I’ll time it to make sure it fits and I get all the main points across. I’ll read and re-read through it multiple times, including immediately before delivering it.
Then there’s the “oh my god, how many people will turn up? Supposing no one does?” Well, that’s not really under my control to do anything about. The one good thing about doing talks over Zoom is that you can change the view so you don’t have to see everyone’s faces and therefore don’t know if there’s one or one hundred people watching. Of course the trouble with doing that is then you miss out on any visual cues from the audience, like wanting to ask a question or wanting you to get a move on and shut up.
I generally don’t get nervous about giving talks, its the bit afterwards. Whilst I’m talking I know what I’m going to say, I’m well prepared, I’m in control. I’ve been to the loo, I’ve got a glass of water handy. But at the end when the facilitator opens things up to questions, that’s when I start getting nervous. What if someone asks a question I don’t know the answer to? Or worse still, I don’t even understand the question? The former can be resolved quite easily with a straight forward ,”you know, I don’t know the answer to that but I’m going to go away and find out, then I’ll let you know”. That’s all good if you actually do that, which I always make a point of on the rare occasions it happens. If I don’t even understand the question I’m not beyond asking them to rephrase it. Particularly if its quite a technical question, I’ll make a joke of it and ask them to dumb it down for those like me who are not technically minded.
The thing about giving talks is that they can open doors to lots of opportunity. An opportunity to meet new people, to listen to their questions and think about things from their perspective, to get involved in something else as a spin off, to be heard by someone who wants you to give your talk to a different group and start opening doors again with another different audience.
As much as I dread doing it for all the reasons above and want to say no, the chance of more doors opening and more new experiences happening is too great an attraction, however flattering the ask was in the first place.
I’ve been given the opportunity to participate in a #bellringing pilot program where exceptionally expert ringers give their time to help those like myself who are trying to master Surprise Major methods.
I’ve been on 2 sessions now mostly with different helpers, but a couple of familiar faces, and the same person has lead both sessions I’ve been on, which is helpful as they get to know your capabilities.
Its been a while since #bellringing has given me so much stress.
On both occasions I’ve spent all day stressing over it, then an hour or so practicing on Abel beforehand. Then trying hard not to use a crib sheet. It’s scary whilst it’s happening because you don’t want to come across as the village idiot. There were a couple of things said this week that I didn’t understand. I had to ask C about one before the session started, and then just laughed the other one off on the call. That’s the one thing I would say does need to be considered by these experts, not everybody will understand some of the terminology, or what difference it makes to the ringing.
Then, because of all the use of brain power, I started to get a headache and get very warm towards the end. Probably the warmest I’d been all day as its about 0 degrees at the moment.
Then there’s a sense of relief when it’s all over. Glad that RingingRoom exists. Glad not to have made a complete fool of myself. Glad to have the opportunity. Glad to have met and rung with ringers from all over, including one from New Zealand. Glad that C had cooked dinner whilst I was ringing and bought me up one of my bottles of prosecco left from my advent calendar. Glad its over … until next time 🤣
OK, so let’s join the band wagon of a review of the last year. After all, its been a very different kind of year. Every aspect of every part of life has been impacted one way or another.
Career – started the year thinking it was going to be another year of same old, same old. For the first 3 months that’s exactly how it was. When covid hit it put a lot of things into perspective and I made a decision that, to be honest, had been brewing a while. An opportunity came along to get back into project management, albeit on a secondment. I had to take it for my own sanity. Even though I didn’t start in the new role until December, the thought of it being there was enough to see me through some really horrible months.
Ringing – various ups and downs along the way. Normal routine of Sunday service, monthly quarter peals and weekly practices turned into nothing at all, then maybe 5 people of a Sunday but no practices, then down to just the 2 of us. It looked like we could have gone back up to 5 again for Christmas Day but at the last minute it was not to be. At first I didn’t want to embrace the virtual world of #bellringing. It just didn’t seem worth it. But by May I was running my own weekly practice for family and friends, joining in the odd other online practice and starting to run a monthly district practice and organise a monthly 10 bell practice. Taking full advantage of ringing methods that I wouldn’t normally get to ring in a tower.
Homelife – I suppose this is where its hit hardest. We haven’t been able to gather as a family for all the usual events. Mum’s 80th birthday, the May “counting”, R’s birthday, Dad’s birthday. No holiday, no ringing weekends. No visits to North Lincolnshire or Hemel Hempstead or Nottingham. No Cake International Show. We did manage to get a couple of day trips to see R when we were all allowed to mix in small groups again but towards the end of the year it became impossible again. We did set up a regular fortnightly family Skype so we could all keep in touch and at least see each other on a screen if not in person.And of course Christmas was very different. No car boot present swap, no drinking Baileys with R. Just a low key day with C, and chatting with family on Skype.
Cakes – as we haven’t had the usual gathering I’ve not needed to bake as many cakes. I did make a small one for mum’s 80th, a friends 60th and Dad’s birthday, but they only needed to be small ones. I have tried some other bakes instead and been mostly up to date with my BakedIn boxes. I’ve tried a few other recipes too, and did manage to get to a socially distanced class with my favourite teacher at @thecupcakeoven to learn how to make cakecicles and heart gems. I didn’t need to make a Christmas cake as we’re not massive fans of it and we got so much food in the hampers that people sent us. I’m hoping that there’ll be more opportunity for cake in 2021.
I suppose I’m quite fortunately really in that I’ve still been able to go to work and keep some semblance of routine. I’m reasonably tech savvy so have been able to embrace video conferencing and Ringing Room. And of course, the most important bit is that I have managed to stay healthy, as has the rest of the family.
Nothing is going to dramatically change as the clock strikes midnight and a new year starts. But there is hope on the horizon. My colleagues are going through an incredibly tough time and are on their knees trying to keep everyone else healthy but with little support and those idiots that flout the rules and put everyone else at risk. But I do have a sense that we will come out of this the other side. Things will be different and we won’t go back to the way things were, or at least I hope not. We have proven that we can work and play differently.
The wonders of technology and the inspiration of the inventors of Ringing Room means that we get to ring bells from the comfort of our own homes on our computers.
Bank Holiday Monday gave us another opportunity to try for another family quarter peal on Ringing Room with representation from Essex, North Lincolnshire and Nottingham.
Timed to start early enough in the morning so we have time to do other things during the day, but late enough for either a bit of a lay in and a lazy start to the day, or to get something done beforehand for those with more enthusiasm for that sort of thing.
Although not #bellringing on tower bells, I’m still counting these virtual quarters within my records as they still require the same level of concentration, take the same length of time to complete, and for some, require the same level of learning. I know some people are not counting them in their personal records as they are not rung on tower bells.
Both the Central Council of Church Bell Ringers and The Ringing World are counting them as “distributed” and therefore recognising their legitimacy but acknowledging that they don’t require the same physical exertion.
This latest one brings my total for 2020 to 7 quarter peals. Not bad considering we’ve not been able to ring with others since March. We rang 4 tower bell quarters in the first 3 months then 3 Ringing Room quarters in the last couple of months.
My overall total is now 412 quarter peals. Considering how long I’ve been ringing you could argue that that’s not many but I think its a reasonable total when you consider opportunities. There was a whole period where I just didn’t ring any at all.
I actually enjoyed ringing the Ringing Room quarters and perhaps…. I could stretch to a peal. 🤔
I had the opportunity to play with my new Christmas gadget on Sunday. C bought me a Hohem stabilising gimble to help record some epic videos on my phone.
I took it up the tower when we went #bellringing to record C and me doing our socially distanced ringing on two bells.
I’ve been recording our ringing for several weeks and uploading it to my YouTube channel, but taking it just on my phone, meaning it was on selfie mode, so it looks like the bells are hung anticlockwise.
I set the gimble up and set it off. It recorded well and the sound quality was good. The bells are even the right way around.
I tried several modes like the panoramic view and tracking a moving image but I was just randomly pressing buttons, without knowing what I was really doing, so it didn’t quite work. I need to watch a tutorial or two to get the hang of it.
I’m looking forward to improving my video skills and it would be interesting to record something when we have all the bells back ringing.
Bells, Bakes & Bettering Myself 