Is #bellringing the pursuit of aimless joy?

I was reading an article about how a woman and her child walked round and round in circles in the deep snow like Winnie the Pooh and Piglet. It had no purpose, barely counted as exercise and once more snow fell they’d do it all again. Sometimes for over an hour. #bellringing can be a bit like that. We can go ringing, be it practice night, a quarter peal or peal attempt, a training day or service ringing. Sometimes #bellringing can have no real purpose but we do it anyway. When the child was asked why she was trudging in circles in the snow for ages, seemingly pointlessly, her simple answer was because it’s fun. #bellringing can be like that too!

Ask people who make sand sculptures, or balance stones, why they do that when they know their efforts will be lost to the elements, and they’ll tell you that it helps them shed stress, entertain others and in some cases “mess with people’s heads”. #bellringing can be like that too! Once we’ve rung our bells, the sound is lost for ever (unless you’ve recorded it and uploaded it to YouTube). It was transitory; there and now gone. But we do it for the fleeting joy of the activity itself.

We can spend a lot of time obsessing over personal goals and problems, feeling the weight of expectation and the fears that go with them. #bellringing can trick us into take a break from all of that. I often consider it therapy after a bad day at the office. To be able to do something physical, that requires my full attention, and stretches my brain. It can become a meditation, a moment to be in the present. When we ring with others we can feel that we are part of something bigger but it’s equally as transient as our few moments or hours of #bellringing itself.

When we think of #bellringing vanishing into the larger scheme of space and time, along with any method mistakes we may make, we needn’t be afraid to try a new bell, a new method, have a go at conducting something for the first time. In the few moments that follow, it becomes ephemeral and consigned to history.

The easy way to say thank you

You will have read before about this virtual #bellringing platform called Ringing Room that enables bell ringers from all over the world to ring together in a virtual world, given we have not been able to ring much in the real world.

I started using Ringing Room in May 2020. It had been around for a few months already by then and the developers were still making changes to it, enhancing the user experience, fixing bugs etc. I even managed to get it featured on the BBC 10pm News in June. It has revolutionised ringing from being able to ring with our friends, meeting new friends, ringing with people from anywhere and everywhere, and ringing things we never thought we could in a tower. There are even several groups of new ringers who have only ever rung in Ringing Room and never stepped foot in a tower and tried real bells.

The development is ongoing, and Wheatley was introduced more recently. Wheatley is basically a bot that will ring all of the others bells unassigned to people, so if you want to ring something on 8 bells but only 6 people are there, Wheatley will fill in the gaps. I think Wheatley will be greatly missed when we go back to tower ringing and meet one or two short!

The developers were rightly rewarded earlier this year by winning a large financial prize at the Association of Ringing Teachers awards. And still the platform goes from strength to strength. What started off as a big of a hobby experience rapidly has been the saving grace of ringers everywhere. It has 5 servers in 4 different countries. I ring in 2 or 3 regular sessions per week, with the occasional extra practice every now and then, so get good use out of it.

Ringing Room is free to use. It doesn’t spam you with emails once you’ve signed up. It doesn’t bug you if you haven’t visited the site in a while. It quietly sits there, ready when you are. Every now and then I remember to send a donation. There is a facility to do this on the Ringing Room site, but again, it’s a button that quietly sits there, doesn’t shout out at you, doesn’t draw your attention to it, makes no expectation and there’s no pressure.

I was about to make a donation again when I saw a new option – to become a Patron by making a regular contribution. Being able to donate regularly would be easier for me, so I wouldn’t forget, but also provide the developers with a more regular stream of income to support the platform and future developments. There were 3 options, £3 per month, £10 per month and £20 per month. There was still the option to make a one of donation of any amount. I had no hesitation in supporting the £20 per month option. The value I get out of it is more than worth it. Patrons would also get access to exclusive voting privileges on new features to be added to the platform.

There are I don’t know how many thousands of users of Ringing Room now, and if each of them made a small contribution to the upkeep and development of the platform, it would be a small way towards thanking the developers for the extraordinary work they have done in creating Ringing Room.

Some people might think that Ringing Room will have its day once we are able to get back into towers to ring real bells, but I for one fully intend to keep using it, even if its for my own practice. I don’t think I’m alone in that thought.

“It’s not failure if you enjoy the process”

This quote from Oprah Winfey popped into my timeline the afternoon in which a group of us had failed to score a quarter peal in the morning. We had met with the intention of going for a quarter peal of Yorkshire Surprise Major on the understanding that as it was one person’s first attempt at a quarter of a Surprise Major method, if it came a cropper, it would be no big deal. It also happened to be the conductor’s birthday so it would have been a nice thing to attempt as a compliment.

We had been virtually #bellringing for nearly 45 minutes and we were only two leads away from the end when the conductor’s technology failed, therefore bringing our attempt round to a premature end. Whenever I ring in a quarter peal, as I’m sure most people do, I ring with the absolute intent of scoring it, and although the one ringer was less experienced at ringing Surprise Major methods, they had been given advice on which bell to ring and what would happen and equipped themselves very well. We were all of the mind that we would go for it and see how far we got.

It does seem sometimes happen that if quarters or peals are lost there needs to be a post-mortem and an attempt at determining what or who was at fault. Most people feel quite down if they don’t score it, and if you were the person who went wrong and caused the pile up, you’d probably feel really bad for the rest of the band. It tends to be more irksome if ringing in a real tower and people had to travel a distance to ring with, what some might consider, nothing to show for it.

Disappointing though it was not to have scored the quarter to mark the conductor’s birthday, there was no bad feeling afterwards at all. Everyone was congratulated for getting that far, especially the person with less experience. There was a feeling of “well that was jolly good practice” and “it proved you can do it”. There were also calls for rearranging it soon so that we could score it and get that first quarter of Surprise Major in the bag.

It makes a real difference when you ring with people who are non-judgemental and who appreciate just ringing together for the pleasure of ringing and helping someone less experienced along the way. We decided not to resume ringing for the rest of the duration of the practice time but had a good chat about everything else instead. It was a pleasure just to have everyone’s company.

We may have failed to score the quarter but we enjoyed the attempt and the process of how we got to even attempt it.