Are you seeking the wrong tribe in the wrong place?

So much focus in life revolves around friendships. I hear of people meeting up with their mates from university now they’re in their 40’s. Of people who have friends dating way back to childhood. Making close friends and keeping them has always been a struggle for me. We want our children to have friends and feel confident and we worry for them if they’re a bit of a loner.

I had a group of friends in high school that stuck together all the time. To be honest I think we were just all the misfits that nobody else wanted in their group. We didn’t stay in touch after school. In fact I bumped into one of them a few years back. We arranged to meet up for coffee. The conversation soon stalled after we’d reminisced and swapped wedding stories. After that we just had nothing in common any more.

I did have a close friend during my early 20’s and into my 30’s. We worked in the same department. We ended up being Godparent to each other’s children. We used to have monthly Girls Night Out (GNO), resulting in food, a lot of drink and maybe a club. I went running to support her when she found out her husband was cheating on her. Arranging GNOs seemed to end up in my lap all the time and when she started a new relationship, he’d be on the phone to her all the time during our night out. We’d barely speak between GNOs and I remember deciding that I deliberately wouldn’t contact her to arrange the next one to see what would happen. Nothing happened. Not if I didn’t make it happen. We drifted apart. Haven’t seen or spoken to her in years now.

So, now I don’t have a best friend. Sometimes that bothers me because there’s no one to share my innermost thoughts with, some things that can’t be shared with your husband. Most of the time, it doesn’t really worry me. But I do miss going out with the girls type evenings where you have a good laugh, put the world to rights and just have a great time.

I have lots of acquaintances through #bellringing but I don’t tend to socialise outside of ringing. Only perhaps one other couple, but that’s as a couple, not me on my own. I have colleagues at work who I can share some things with but again, there are things you can’t always share with them either.

I don’t have that solid group of girl friends to rely on to help me navigate the ups and downs of life.

I find I edit myself when I’m with others to avoid sounding ignorant or uninteresting, or end up just sitting there listening to these larger than life, exuberant, interesting, erudite others with nothing to contribute or not being able to get a word in edgeways even if I did have something to add.

Constant stroking of other people’s egos by liking or commenting well crafted platitudes on their social media is not something I do well. If you get a comment from me, its genuine. I can’t do false praise or flattery.

Therapist Sally Baker, in an article in October’s Psychologies Magazine written by Emma Reed, suggested that rather than spending lots of energy on others we should try tapping into our own intuition to determine what it is we really need from friendships. Do your friends make you feel good about yourself, or judged? Do you need a raucous group night out or a quiet chat over a cup of tea in the garden?

Like all relationships its a two way affair. So many times I have dropped things to run off to support someone in a time of crisis yet I know they, nor anyone else would do it for me. There are those infuriating people who post on social media about being there for you if you need them. I wonder how many would actually drop everything and come running, or how quickly the excuses would start.

I don’t have a posse but I do have a number of people I can talk to in certain situations. I don’t have that one or two who I can tell all my innermost thoughts to. I’m not sure I’d have someone to call if my life went totally up the swanny. But then maybe I don’t need it.

What do you seek from friendship? And do you get it?

Relationships are hard work

I’m sure, like me, you have relationships that leave you feeling drained. The ones you don’t look forward to engaging with whether work, social or family. Relationships is one of the key things that I am trying to work on and improve at, but I know I have a long way to go with them. Some are much more challenging than others.

Karen Gately suggested seven ways that all great relationships have in common and it is worth considering each of these amongst the close relationships we have:

Trust – this takes time to build and is often difficult to regain once lost. Without it though, you will never feel safe, comfortable, open and close. It requires us to be willing to listen to some hard truths and learn from them.
Openness – expressing yourself openly and honestly. Being heard and hearing the other person. Engaging in honest and respectful conversations that allow you to understand one another and build connection. It’s about sharing concerns and problems directly to resolve them.
Respect – No one is perfect. Everyone has a different perspective built on different experiences. Respecting those different values and perspectives will avoid disappointment and frustration.
Teamwork – Everyone needs to do their part. It takes two to Tango. Making decisions together, listening to each other’s concerns and ideas with an open mind with build mutual trust and respect.
Joy – having fun, laughter can help keep healthy relationships energised. We can’t all have a good day every day, but if we are able to help lift each other’s’ spirits it will make people feel loved and accepted.
Kindness – treat each other with care, consideration and compassion. Speak with warmth and consideration, generosity and friendliness.
Forgiveness – holding on to unresolved resentment, disappointment and frustration can erode trust and drain our spirits. You need to be able to express how you feel and then let it go. You need to be able to forgive others’ shortcomings and failings and support one another.

To me it seems that some of these contradict others. If I am being honest and open, I may not always be speaking kindly. I have occasionally been on the receiving end of other people’s tirades both as a manger and in my #bellringing roles, yet I am not allowed to respond the same way. I have to take the higher ground and put up with being spoken to in ways that other people would call me out on if I spoke to them in the same tone. Some of that goes with the territory. Some of it I have to put down to being “the bigger person” but it still hurts, and it’s still frustrating with people operate with double standards.

I do tend to hold on to frustration and resentment, but I am gradually getting better at letting some of that go. Someone once said to me “light the blue touch paper and stand well back”, when I had to share something that I knew others would get up in arms about. This person suggested that basically, say what you have to say then move on, how other people react to it is their business, do not get involved in back and forth chat. As it turned out, a whole bunch of other people pitched in and put the doom-mongers and negative ninnies in their place.

I still have a way to go with some relationships that are a bit broken (as far as I’m concerned anyway, maybe the other person/people don’t feel the same), but I’m choosing one at a time to deal with rather than overwhelm myself with trying to fix everything all at once. Work in progress.

One thing I thought of whilst writing this blog was perhaps a good place to start when trying to rebuild relationships would be to list all the other person’s good qualities and restart the relationship from there, rather than a place of what you might perceive to be their shortcomings.

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.

What a busy day

Following on from the events of Friday, Saturday was just as manic.

I was due to be helping C with his #bellringing students learning Stedman Doubles but no sooner had we got settled my phone rang. This was the first of 5 conversations with different media throughout the day. I wasn’t much help to C at all.

I ended up giving one interview over Zoom, 2 others over the phone at home, and one whilst I was actually walking into the city to toll our bell for Prince Philip, which was going out live. I sounded really out of breath. The wind was making my eyes water which in turn made my nose run. I desperately wanted to sniff but didn’t think that would sound pleasant over the radio.

Then I tolled our 10th bell, half muffled 99 times, once for each year of HRH’s extraordinary life. There were a few more people in the cathedral when I came down than when I went up so I hope the ringing brought them there.

Back home to some more emails and another phone call from the press, who wanted to quote a unique headline but I told her that tolling a bell when someone dies is not unique. She laughed and said that I’d just ruined her headline but she was glad she checked.

I had a couple of hours rest before gearing up for Bellringers Question Time. This is where we have a panel who answer questions they’ve never seen before, some serious, some silly. I had organised the event and invited some ringing friends to be on the panel. I was so pleased with how it went. They were interesting and entertaining, as I knew they would be. I thank them wholeheartedly for saying yes when I asked them.

The session was recorded, so after it ended I needed to edit it slightly, then upload it to our Youtube channel. This took about an hour or so.

I slept well last time!