What no bells?

Although there has been no group #bellringing for such a long time now C and I have been going to the Cathedral and ringing two bells just to keep things going.

This week however we are away visiting E&M so not able to go to ring. In ordinary times we would go with E&M to their tower to ring on Sunday bit as they’re not back ringing yet either, we had the morning off.

An odd feeling to not go ringing but after yesterday’s marathon walk around Hardwick Hall we were all exhausted and enjoyed a couple of extra hours sleep.

I am looking forward to returning to the Cathedral next weekend when we will have a couple of extra of ringers for the first time in many, many months. The rules still only allow six people with social distancing, masks and good ventilation but it will be fantastic to hear more than ding and dong and try real ringing methods.

As we head into June and the possibility of no restrictions after the 21st (fingers tightly crossed) we may also be able to start practices again. I know many towers already have but because we are very reliant on people from other towers supporting our practice we’ve decided to hold off for a while.

It will be interesting to see and hear how we get on when trying to raise and ring the heavy bells for the first time in 16 months. Managing people’s expectations of what they could and should ring might be a challenge.

From what I’ve read on social media from other towers it seems that there has been a positive community reaction to bells being rung again but then I upoose no one is going to share any negative responses they’ve had.

I always share details of what ringing we are planning and what we’ve done on our Twitter account and tag local radio, the diocrsan office, the cathedral, local city sites as well. Some are really positive and like and share our posts which is lovely.

I want to build a closer relationship with the cathedral and diocesan offices and local community sites so that they start to fully consider the advantages that bellringers bring to church and community.

I’ve already had conversations with the cathedral office about a diocesan wide ring to mark the enthronement of our new Diocesan Bishop later on in the year and look forward to some closer links.

Ding 1 and Ding 2

C and I having been ringing just 2 bells at the Cathedral on a Sunday morning now for exactly 4 months. Prior to that we could ring in 2 groups so long as we were socially distanced, but since the last increase in Tiers and lockdowns, we had to reduce it to just the 2 of us.

We’ve got ourselves into a very good routine by ringing 1 and 2, then make places and back, then 3 dodges, then 3 places again, and we just keep doing that. This means that you end up alternating dodging at handstrokes and backstrokes. It’s a good handling practice, but its surprising easy to lose count up to 3!

Each week I’ve been taking a video and uploading it to our #bellringing social media so my friends can see that we’re still alive and doing something. There are those who would ordinarily be ringing with us but can’t at the moment. The majority of towers still aren’t ringing at all, so we’re lucky that the 2 of us can at least do something. It seems to be well appreciated by the Cathedral, and we’ve had some comments from the public on our social media sites saying that they miss the sound of the bells, or that they heard us ringing our 2 bells.

We ring in short 5 or so minute bursts between about 10am and 10.30am, immediately prior to the morning service that is live streamed on the Cathedral’s social media. I don’t think that any of our ringing has featured at all, as we’ve generally finished and wound our way down the spiral stairs just as the service starts. We hope that the local community find some solace in the hearing of the bells and that the church is still “open”.

We will continue to do our bit as long we as are able, and we wait patiently for when the time comes that we are able to welcome our bellringing colleagues back and we can ring on more bells and make a joyful sound.

And the bells are (or are not) ringing out for Christmas Day

This Christmas for bellringers, like everyone else, is very different. We would have ordinarily have rung every night this week for the various Carol Services, as well as practice night and Sunday Service. Instead, we’re at home, watching TV.

Over the last few months we’ve gone from ringing 5 bells, the two of us and a family of 3, alternating with another group of three, at socially distanced sides of the ringing chamber, to just me and him ringing 2 bells for 3 short bursts totalling 15 minutes.

A few weeks ago it looked like we might have been able to ring 5 bells again for Christmas as restrictions were being relaxed, but then restrictions tightened again, so on Christmas morning it’ll just be me and him again.

The cathedral isn’t even able to have a congregation, which seems so weird considering g it’s one of the biggest days in the liturgical calendar, but health and safety comes first. The choir prerecorded singing and Nine Lessons and Carols were prerecorded and streamed on social media. A shame there wasn’t any bells at the beginning. They already have some recordings we sent earlier in the year, so they could have done.

We shall ring our 2 bells on Christmas morning, so some semblance of tradition. I suspect that the only people to hear us will be the verger and preacher in the Cathedral and the local seagulls and pigeons. But we shall herald the arrival of Christmas Day.

Have as merry a Christmas as you can and stay healthy.

We did a thing

When lockdown #1 began back in March, #bellringing, like so many other things was put on hold. Fortunately, some very clever people thought up RingingRoom, an online virtual belfry that enabled groups of people, from anywhere in the world, to join together to practice.

For a while I wasn’t particularly interested in it, thinking it was a bit too techy for me to get the hang of. But as time went on, and there seemed to be no return to the usual rhythm of practice nights, meetings, quarter peals and peals, I decided to have a closer look.

From some time in May, I invited a small group of my siblings (the ones that ring), my hubby, and some friends, to a regular Thursday evening virtual #bellringing session. Each week we’d try to get the hang of ringing using a keyboard instead of a rope, and learn a different set of visual clues.

One of my siblings has always had it in her head that should could never get the hang of ringing Cambridge Surprise Minor. She had, in the dim and distant past, rung it and even scored a quarter peal of it, but it had never stuck and she rarely had the opportunity to try. I therefore made it an early mission of this group to get her to be ringing it without fuss.

We took a circuitous route, using different methods to introduce different parts of the work and build up gradually. In the meantime, she had also put out a request for anyone else to help her, during her own organised sessions, with extra practice during the daytime.

With this additional help, it wasn’t long before she’d got a plain course sorted and was trying touches. Then someone suggested going for a quarter peal attempt. There were a couple of failed attempts, either technology failures, or brain failures. She eventually changed her day time sessions to a Friday so that I could join in too on my day off.

On our Thursday evening sessions, we have moved on from Cambridge to Ipswich, Primrose and now Norwich. From someone who didn’t think she could ring Surprise Minor methods, she’s now got several under her belt.

It so happened that her hubby had the week off work and it was his birthday on Friday so the suggestion was to try for a quarter peal of Cambridge again. With some trepidation 6 of us gathered, from the comfort of our respective homes and started ringing. It was going very well. Only a few clips here and there but nothing o worry about. There was quite a hiccup quite near the end, but we all stuck with it and managed to come out of it in the right order.

After 49 minutes, a very reasonable quarter peal of Cambridge Surprise Minor was scored. As you might imagine she was really chuffed. Everyone was really pleased to have scored it, especially as a birthday compliment to her hubby too.

Another #bellringing milestone ticked.

Time to Ramp Things Up

On Thursday evenings I run a RingingRoom virtual #bellringing session with a small group made up of family and friends. We’ve been doing this since about May, in leiu of actual bellringing in a tower on real bells.

Over the months we’ve been building up our repertoire of methods having started off ringing various Minor methods like Double Oxford, Buxton and Pinehurst before moving on to Surprise Minor methods, Cambridge, Primrose, Ipswich and Bourne.

For some of the group, including myself, it’s the first time that we’ve rung some of these methods so it has been a massive achievement for the group.

Some weeks are better than others. Sometimes the technology is a bit flaky and let’s the rhythm down and sometimes one or more of us isn’t quite on top form. The point is that we stick with it. Each week we have a core 8 or 9 people, so each touch requires one or more person to sit out. But that’s just what it would be like in a real tower anyway. We spend about an hour or so ringing and I use a simple matrix (pictured) to try to make sure that everyone gets a fair go, and gets to try the method from every bell.

Now we’re more proficient at ringing some Surprise Minor methods, I asked everyone how they wanted to proceed. The options were to either a) stick with Surprise Minor and work our way through some of those methods, b) to move on to ringing Major methods, starting with something basic to help us get into an 8 bell rhythm, or c) to go for a combination of both, to add some variety, but that might mean sometimes learning 2 methods at the same time for some people. I want everyone to feel that they get something out of it, enjoy it, but not to feel pressured too much that they spend all week stressing over it.

The resounding result was to try a combination of both. We then agreed that the 2 methods should be “methods of the month” so we spend every week in the month consolidating those 2 methods before moving on. So for November our methods of the month will be Norwich Surprise Minor and Little Bob Major. Hopefully we’ll be able to give everyone good go at both of those throughout the evenings.

And after an intensive ringing session, we all head down the virtual pub for a good natter to catch up with what everyone’s been up to. Just like a real ringing session but without leaving the comfort of home.

Thank goodness for the advent of RingingRoom and Zoom.

Just the two of us

With our area in Tier 2 restrictions the #bellringing community is once again advised to not meet in multiple households. So the decision was whether its worth #bellringing just 2 bells.

We went along to the Cathedral anyway. We met the Dean and other clergy who also asked if everything was OK last week as we didn’t ring at all then. We clarified that others had been ill so we’d decided not to ring, and explained that it would just be the 2 of us until restrictions changed.

C did try to chime 2 bells so we could try 3 between us but the musical version was too heavy to keep going, so we decided to stick to ringing the 4th and 5th properly.

We did a few minutes of rounds, ding dong, then swapped places, dong ding, then back again. Then we did some places dodging. Two blows in the same place, dodge, 2 places, then dodge, and kept that going for a while. The finished up with a couple more minutes of ding dong.

Although ringing 2 bells may seem pointless to some, we felt that it was important keep #bellringing going if we could. It seemed to have been welcomed by the Dean.

Fingers crossed these restrictions won’t last long and we can meet some of our friends again.

Optimistic October

Every month I download a copy of the Action for Happiness Calendar. I don’t always do what it suggests but sometimes things are relevant or a good reminder to do something positive. As today is the 1st October, todays new month starts with writing down your most important goals for this month.

OK, where to start….

1. Get new job description – I am aware that a secondment opportunity is in the offing and its something that appeals to me. I know that the JD is being authorised, so the job should be being advertised soon. Need to sharpen up my Expression of Interest notes.

2. Find more ways to spend quality time with C and R – there has been an awful lot of things going on at the moment with work, ringing meetings, talks etc that sometimes it feels that C and I don’t spend any real time being together. Getting to see R now is more difficult too as her working patterns have changed so her days off no longer coincide with mine. I need to give some priority to finding things that we can do together that mean we spend actual time with each other to the exclusion of it being perfunctory, like putting in a new front door. Sure, we will spend time together to do that but it’s a job that needs doing, not something that is necessarily spending quality time together.

3. Focus on some PR activities – as you know I’m the PRO for both my local #bellringing association and the Central Council of Church Bellringers and we need to get some more good news out in the public domain.

4. Bake – I want to carry on with the weekly baking challenge of making something from the collection of magazines that I’ve accumulated.

5. Lose weight – probably counter intuitive given #4, but I really must put more effort into this area instead of just playing at it. My overall health will thank me for it.

There are probably many more smaller ticket things to focus on too, but by spending more time on each of these bigger areas, my whole wellbeing should be much improved and I will feel more resilient and ready to tackle most things.

Knowing your audience

I was assisting on the panel for some interviews for another department and it really interested me how different people respond to the same question.

One of the questions asked the candidates to give an example of how they would modify their communication tactics to fit their audience. This got me thinking about who was the audience, what was their preferred method of receiving communication, what level of detail do they need, or should they need, what information is it I’m trying to share?

I was thinking all this because of the talk I’m giving this evening. The who is my audience is anyone that registered for the talk, so the assumption is that they have an interest in the topic in the first place. What their preferred method of communication, as well as my preferred method of delivery are moot points, as due to gathrring restrictions, it is being delivered by video conference and inevitably includes death by powerpoint. What level of detail do they need? Given that the audience is a mixed bag of individuals, tower, district or association officers it needs to encompass all levels and they’ll just have to pick out the bits that are relevant to what they need. What information am I trying to communicate again, is a broad spectrum across different levels of interest. I’m not pretending to be an expert, I have some knowledge about the subject and have some experience at it. That doesn’t mean that I have all the answers, or that if you follow everything I say, all your worries will be over.

Apparently there are nearly 50 signed up to come and listen to my talk this evening. I hope they find it interesting and informative and some people might learn something new. I’m sure I’ll get some form of feedback afterwards.

Busy week ahead

Monday night is the only evening this week when I haven’t got something in the diary. As well as a full time day job, I have 3 #bellringing meetings on Tuesday, Saturday and Sunday, one presentation to deliver on Wednesday and 2 RingingRoom sessions on Thursday and Friday. Everything has come at once. Thankfully its not like that every week otherwise my head would explode.

Considering that there’s very little actual ringing being done, there’s still a lot of work to do.

In order to be able to get to a point when ringing can return to anything like it was previously an awful lot of things are bring planned and delivered behind the scenes. Some people are saying “what’s the point if we can’t actually ring?” To me, the point is that if we don’t do all of these things now, there may not be ringing to go back to.

I fear that we will have lost an awful lot of ringers during this hiatus. Some due to age or infirmity but others who were only just setting out on their learning may find other things have tempted them away.

Within our own Association I see that some districts have been really good at getting people together virtually having district quiz nights, even having their scheduled meeting by video conference. Some have even managed to meet up where social distancing can be maintained and before the Rule of Six came in. Others have barely tried. It demonstrates the variety of leadership styles and levels of expectation rather starkly. I’ve done my bit in our district by holding a virtual district practice on the evenings when we would have been holding a proper district practice but attendance hasn’t been overwhelming, but then it never was at the real thing anyway. The district meeting and training day that we should have had didn’t place. There has been no discussion about plans for next year yet.

One of the meetings, on Saturday, is the Association management committee meeting. All districts are required to report on activities since the last meeting and I am looking forward to hearing about what’s been going on in other districts. I’m hoping that there will be some direction on how we should approach next year, particularly with the Annual District Meetings that take place in January and how they can successfully be conducted.

I will keep doing my little bit to keep things going as long as I am able.

Busy doing nothing

Apart from an interview to record in the evening we had nothing planned for Saturday. There was a time when we should have been helping at the District Training Day but with current restrictions, that got cancelled 😞

I demanded that the alarm clock be turned off. I have to get up at 6am for work, so I was going to take this rare opportunity for a lay in. Still wide awake at 6am though. Didn’t get out of bed until nearer 8am but couldn’t get back to sleep properly.

Once up and showered Mr presented me with coffee and a bacon sandwich for breakfast. Blessed. Then I just sat playing games on my tablet until he’d showered and dressed.

We wandered into town for nothing in particular but still managed to spend money on not a lot. I did buy a new pair of work shoes and Mr spotted a poster in the shoe shop of someone bearing the same surname as my family. Random.

Spent the afternoon back home reading and generally not doing much. Mr made dinner and we watched TV for a bit.

I recorded a #bellringing interview later on, then back to the sofa for more of doing nothing in particular.

Part of me thinks that I’ve wasted a day, but then there’s nothing wrong with having some solid “do nothong” time to recharge the old batteries.

Back on it tomorrow.