E by ‘eck, I’ve been playing with me e-bells

As you know, I bought C a pair of e-bells for his birthday last week. I also bought myself a set and the companion book. I learnt how to ring Plain Bob Minor about 2 years ago now but that was the last time I rang handbells.

Today was the first opportunity we had to properly play with them. He’d already set up all the software on the PC and on my laptop so we were ready to plug in and play.

I had a few goes on my own connected to Abel to start with and started off with Plain Hunt Minimus. Two pairs of bells swap the order in which they ring. I found the explanation in the book extremely helpful in getting what my brain already knows about Plain Hunt Minimus on tower bells should look like. First and 2^nd place bells sway and the 3^rd and 4^th place bells swap. Then the bells in 2nds and 3rds place swap whilst the other two stay in the same position. Keep alternating this until you get back into rounds. Very simple and straight forward instruction.

I did ok at that so upped the anti by trying Plain Hunt Minor, that’s with three pairs of bells. The good thing about Abel is that it will ring the other bells you don’t. The bad news is it won’t wait for you like real ringers often do (even though they shouldn’t).

C was getting himself set up on the PC at this point so we decided to try ringing together. We moved across to Ringing Room to try that now that they have Wheatley installed. Wheatley does the same thing as Abel, i.e. rings all the unassigned bells but you have to tell it what to do. There were a few technical issues, but we had several goes and I tried it on different pairs of bells. I rang 1-2 to start with and got quite proficient at that, then rang 5-6 which is the next easiest pair as the bells course each other (follow each other up and down the pattern). Then I had a go on 3-4 which is a bit more complicated as the bells move apart and back together again in opposite directions. That was slightly less well executed.

Then we moved on to Handbell Stadium, the virtual handbell ringing platform. Took a bit of getting used to setting it up but once there, I had a go on my own ringing Plain Hunt Minor again. Then C decides we should ring together. We rang Plain Hunt Minimus together and then he decides that we’ll move straight on to Plain Bob Minimus. This means that I have to remember to dodge as well as plain hunt. 3/4 down was ok but I seemed to struggle a bit with 3/4 up. Eventually got the hang of it.

The key for me is regular practice at it otherwise I’ll forget and we’ll be back to the beginning every time. C went back to practicing by himself and was ringing touches of Plain Bob Minor, but that’s because he’s clever and can ring handbells anyway.

Long way to go yet but had quite good fun and was quite pleased with my progress. Don’t think I’ll be ringing with a mixed group, or any quarters any time soon though.

Top tips

I’m on LinkedIn, the professional network on the internet that allows you to connect and strengthen professional relationships and learn new skills. You can follow organisations and groups in much the same was a Facebook and Twitter and other social media sites.

One of the groups that I follow for interest and to support #bellringing activities, rather than work related, is about Public Relations and in particular this group focuses on internal communications. In fact its called The Institute of Internal Communication. Each week a contributor called Carole Searwert, a copywriter and newsletter writer posts an article called Top Tips Tuesday which gives you some pointers that you might find useful. Admittedly, most of it relates to the business world rather than the small, social charity, activity type world, but occasionally there’s something that make sense.

This week’s top tips were all about How to Grow Your Newsletter List. In the #bellringing community, we tend to use newsletters quite a lot to keep in touch with our ringers, let them know what’s going on and what’s been coming up. We have them at all levels. Some districts do their own. Most association’s probably have one. The Central Council of Church Bellringers (CCCBR) and the Association of Ringing Teachers (ART) are currently issuing a joint one on survival and recovery strategies. ART have two of their own, Tower Talk and ART Works for slightly different audiences.

Most newsletters are usually quite well done. Lots of uplifting news and case studies, information that may help, updates on what’s been going on and useful contacts or diary information. Hopefully they come with lots of bright shiny photos too. Invariably these days they come in digital format, but some are still produced in paper, and some are both.

I contribute to many a newsletter and have at some time or other been featured in all of the above. But how do we know whether what we produce gets read? How can we increase our readership?

The article offers 10 suggestions, some of which are business orientated, but the things that I picked up that might be useful in a #bellringing newsletter context were:

Offering an interesting “lead magnet” as a sign up incentive. Now, this relates particularly to getting new business sign ups, however, the suggestions offered actually could form part of your regular newsletter offering e.g. “how to tips”, a cheat-sheet (in our case maybe an article that explains a particular method like the way I learned Double Norwich Court Bob Major as first, treble bob, last, near, full, far) accompanied by some diagrams.
Include a sign up link in your email signature. This I thought was interesting mainly from a Central Council perspective and I shall be offering it up to see if it works.
Add a “forward to a friend” button (obviously for digital newsletters). Again, I’m thinking Central Council and local Association websites News Page at the bottom of every article so that if someone likes it and thinks that a friend ought to read it, they can easily forward the link.
Promote your newsletter on your social media to raise awareness. Sounds a bit obvious but do we actually do it? Probably not consistently.

A two minute read at lunch time has now just turned into an evening’s work to see if it’s feasible.

Inspiring Award Winners

I watched the Association of Ringing Teachers (ART) Awards ceremony this evening. Considering we haven’t been able to do much ringing in the real world over the last 12 months there were so many inspiring stories of what people have managed to achieve.

From young ringers who haven’t been #bellringing very long themselves, achieving great things, contributing to their local towers and beyond, teaching and inspiring. Others made contributions in print and on line, recruiting new and retaining existing ringers, encouraging, leading, educating and developing.

The big winners of the evening, which were thoroughly deserved, were the joint runners up in the award for Excellence in Development of technology Graham John and the team behind Handbell Stadium and e-bells. Handbell ringing has taken off massively and having a real handling experience has been a massive benefit. The undoubted winners of the night were Bryn and Leland, the creators of RingingRoom. Over 10,000 registered users across the world have had the benefit of being able to ring with each other on the virtual platform which has been a real life saver for ringing.

It was quite emotional to hear all the testimonials for each nomination. If all the nominees were together the power of the tower would be palpable.

Ringing is in very good hands. Congratulations to all the nominees and winners.

The same only different

Some of the more advanced #bellringing methods are variations on a theme. The work that you do in one method often becomes part of the work that you do in another. Quite often experienced ringers will describe methods as “so and so over thingy” (obviously using real methods names). For the educated this makes it easier to put those two methods together to create a new one. For the rest of us though its pure gibberish. I understand that its relative to where the treble is.

In the virtual #bellringing sessions that I run on a Thursday night we’ve been ringing York Surprise Minor and now moved on to Durham Surprise Minor. You can see a lot of similarities between the two. The experts in the group say that York is London below and Cambridge above. That’s ok if you know London and Cambridge. Durham is Wells below and Cambridge above. Wells is Wells below and London above. Confused?

There’s a really useful table at https://www.ringing.info/minor/minor_41.html and Complib gives you more information on what’s above and what’s below in each of the 41 Surprise Minor methods.

This week I’ve rung London below and Cambridge above, Wells below and Cambridge above, Wells and London. I can’t learn them as one thing above and another below. That just fries my brain.

I can see that 5^th place Wells is the same as 6^ths place Durham and that 5ths place London is the same as 6^tss place York, which is, I suppose the same as the above and below bit, but I wouldn’t be able to figure that out without the line in front of me.

Mind…. blown!!

That was the week (or 2) that was

The end of my 2 weeks annual leave has arrived. Monday morning sees the return to the office. Have I had a good holiday? Do I feel relaxed and rejuvenated?

Yes, I’ve had a good couple of weeks off, considering. I don’t particularly feel relaxed or rejuvenated thought. But I suspect that’s to do with the fact that we’re in lockdown and we can’t go anywhere or do anything or see anyone.

If we have been able to do things, I might have felt more energised. As it was, I spent most of the week not venturing far from home.

The first week I took the opportunity to undertake an online Mindfulness course. This was quite interesting and useful, but not something that I’ve suddenly found enlightenment from. It did give me some focus for a few days.

I had 7 virtual #bellringing sessions during the fortnight, some which I ran. I watched a funeral online. I attended 4 meetings and 1 virtual dinner. In between, I did some reading, played some games on my tablet and celebrated my 50^th birthday, lockdown stylee.

I did spend some time, quite purposefully, doing not a lot. C still did all the housework and cooking.

This sort of gave me an insight to what life might be like at a time when I could give up paid work completely. However, if that was the case, things would happen very differently. I would see a fair distribution of household labour. I would also probably do some form of exercise, whether down the gym or online stuff at home, or more walking at least. I would definitely do more baking and cooking. I do miss that a little bit.

I’ve had a good couple of weeks off and enjoyed not having to get up early and go to an office and get grief all day. I’m sure that feeling will be short lived when I open the office door.

Virtual Henry Johnson Dinner with the St Martin’s Guild

As I’d given a talk to the St Martin’s Guild in September last year, I was kindly invited to attend the virtual 133rd Henry Johnson Dinner.

The invitation included a suggested menu that we may have been eating had the dinner has taken place for real. This was optional to follow but added an element of authenticity to proceedings. Personally, I went with whatever C dished up.

The evening started with a musical performance by one of the ringers and his fiancée. This was followed by a talk on the history of Henry Johnson and the establishment of the Dinner, followed by a toast.

After that was a video of ringing in Ringing Room of call changes on 16 bells, call changes on 6 bells and handbells by The Brumdingers, the young ringers group. This included photos of the young people playing jenga using Caramel wafer chocolate bars. There was another speech and then a photo montage of previous dinners.

What a fantastic event with 69 participants logged in but many were couples or family groups, so possibly 90+ attendees. Its the first virtual dinner that I’ve been to. All the appropriate proceedings were observed. Congratulations to the Guild and thank you for the invitation.

Time to move on

Our virtual #bellringing practices on a Thursday evening with friends and family have had a bit of a progressive plan. We started off with some simple “plain” minor methods i.e. where the treble plain hunts and worked our way up to surprise minor and then started introducing an 8 bell method as well. We’ve had methods of the month for the past few months so we can consolidate our learning.

February saw us ringing York Surprise Minor and Kent Treble Bob Major, and for March we’re moving on to Durham Surprise Minor and Oxford Treble Bob Major.

A lot f the methods we played with I’ve never rung before, and some of the rest of the band haven’t either. Its been quite a fascinating experiment. Some of these methods I never would have thought that I’d ever ring. I dare say, that when we get back to ringing in the real world, I’m unlikely to ring those methods in a tower. The places we ring at regular just don’t ring that sort of thing.

I would like to try and ring them in a proper tower, but suspect that that might require some engineering to get the right band and the right time.

Some methods are transitory, they are stepping stones that help you understand more complex methods, and the likelihood of going back to them on a regular basis is minimal. Some are very similar and are good to be spliced together for variation, you just need to remember which one is which.

My brain capacity isn’t good enough to retain all of these, so I suspect that if we were to try to ring them in a tower, I would have to relearn them all over again.

Still, its good fun, stretching the brain and having a go at things we don’t normally ring.

Every day’s a school day

It seems like it at the moment anyway. Between doing my online mindfulness course, which has really challenged some thoughts and feelings, and learning methods for virtual #bellringing in Ringing Room sessions, of which I had 4 this week.

The first #bellringing session was a district practice which I didn’t need to learn anything new for but the session that I run on Thursdays we’re consolidating methods that we’ve been learning for February. Some of those methods are repeated at a Friday morning session but sometimes something different. Then every other Friday there’s another session that changes methods every time. This week I needed to learn Newcastle and Alnwick Surprise Minor. And in 2 weeks’ time, we’re aiming for London and Wells Surprise Minor, and I set new methods for our Thursday session at the beginning of the month.

Some of these methods I’ve never even looked at, always thinking they are beyond my capability but with the advent of Ringing Room, have been able to ring things that I wouldn’t normally get to ring in any of the towers that I would normally frequent.

Learning to ring takes time, even just the basics of handling a bell on your own, then you need to join in with others and make a meaningful sound. Then you can move on to the more complicated stuff, but that tends to depend on others a bit more, as you can only ring to the standard of the most novice ringer in the band. However, learning skills that require longer term commitment can be rewarding and stimulating for the brain.

A quick internet search shows that there are a multitude of sites that promote learning something new, from new skills, to new languages, to cooking and baking, knitting and creating videos. I’ve always found learning something new to be rewarding. It doesn’t necessarily make me an expert in it but it gives me better understanding, better skills, better adjustment and a wider range of things to do.

Having just completed the 6 week mindfulness course, I’m now looking around the site to find the next thing to dive into.

Lost Emails

I wondered whether it had all gone quiet, I was being ignored, or something was amiss. I usually get about 20 emails a day to my various “home” accounts, excluding spam. By that I mean my own email address, my Association emails addresses and my Central Council addresses. For the last few weeks I’ve had significantly fewer.

Needing to be on a Zoom meeting I was concerned that 24 hours before the meeting I hadn’t had the Agenda and supporting papers, nor the link to the Zoom meeting. A quick fire email to the right person and it seems that my name had dropped off of the email group so I hadn’t received what had been sent out.

Because I was using my laptop, not the main PC with the main email stuff in, I had to log into my Gmail account, but the email that had been sent with the meeting information wasn’t there. I was frantically trying to log into everything. Outlook, Gmail, Office 365. Depending on which of the aliases used, depends on where the email ends up. Ended up having to email it to myself from the home PC to the Gmail account. Eventually got in, but not without some angst.

Whilst I was logging into various emails boxes, I also came across a couple of other emails that seemed to have been sitting in a Spam folder for one account but were not showing in any of the other redirected accounts. They were quite important emails too. I thought that all the email redirects were supposed to find their way into at least one of the 3 main email address locations.

Apart from my work email address, of which I have 2, I have 6 other alias email addresses for various roles. The majority of them get redirected via our main location but with the recent addition of Office 365 for some ringing activity, that seems to have thrown a spanner in the works. Sometimes I get duplicates, sometimes I get none. Sometimes I get someone else’s reply before I get the original message. Sometimes it takes 2 days for them to come through.

I’m reasonably IT literate, but this gets so confusing.

The holy trinity

Its by no coincidence that my blog site is called Bells, Bakes & Bettering Myself. Today I got to do all three. The holy trinity. The hatrick. Whatever you want to call it.

This morning was spent with friends and family in Ringing Room, the virtual #bellringing platform. A group of us from Essex, North Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire were able to ring together, have a good natter and make some progress in our learning. Bells part 1. Tick.

Early afternoon was taken up by decorating a cake for me and hublet for valentines day. Now, I need to fess up and admit that I didn’t actually make the cake, I only decorated it. A fantastic website called Sweet Success Cakes https://cccbr.org.uk/2021/02/10/the-survival-and-recovery-toolbox-issue-3/ can ship you ready make cakes in any size and different shapes and flavours you like. I’d already decided that I’m going to make myself a cake for my birthday next week and was looking at the site for some inspiration. They were offering 4 x 4 inch cakes, chocolate, red velvet, lemon and plain for £10. No brainer. Therefore, I decided that I would use one for valentines day, 2 for my birthday and have an extra tall cake and the other one for his birthday. I’ll have a rethink when it comes to our anniversary. All of these dates happen within a month of each other. The cakes can be frozen and defrosted when you need them so that’s handy. Cake done, although I suppose not technically baking but… Bakes. Tick.

Then came a meeting with some members of the Central Council and The Big Ideas Company, an organisation we’ve worked with before on major #bellringing projects. We were kicking around some new ideas for regenerating ringing when we can return post Covid. Bells part 2. Tick.

Then there was a little slot available until dinnertime to do a bit of research. I’m currently doing a free online course about mindfulness and wellbeing. See yesterday’s blog for how that went. The course does require you to do some independent learning so I was having a look about for scholarly articles on the science of mindfulness. Turns out there’s quite a few. I’ve pulled off a few that I think might be interesting. Bettering Myself. Tick.

Bells, Bakes and Bettering Myself. Does what it says on the tin.