Start the day as you mean to go on.

The start of the day really set the tone for the rest of the day. I accidentally opened tomorrow’s advent calendar window instead of today’s. Wishing the day away. Doh!

We had a virtual #bellringing session this morning that wasn’t successful either. Three attempts at one method came a cropper so we tried a different one and that didn’t want to go either. Having been ringing for around 45 minutes, we called it a day.

After lunch I baked a cake ahead of decorating it tomorrow and it sank in the middle. A bit of stealth buttercream will fix that.

Early evening the new Covid Tiers were announced and has put us and our daughter’s areas in tier 4 which means that it is likely we cannot see her for Christmas now. Her flat mate can’t go to his family either. At least if they have to stay in the flat there’ll be the 2 of them so neither will be on their own. If we can wangle it and they can come here, of course they’ll both come, we wouldn’t leave him on his own. R is, at the moment, still working until Wednesday. My fingers are well and truly crossed. I felt physically sick for a while, at the prospect of not being able to see her, or that her flatmate may have gone back to his family and she’d be alone.

I participated in another virtual #bellringing session in the early evening and there were some technical problems as well as method mistakes so that wasn’t as good as it could have been. My brain was truly fried by the end of that.

Dinner was a lovely fully loaded jacket potato with bacon, sweetcorn and some tomatoey concoction. Dinner was a bit later than anticipated as we had been waiting for a call back from R as one option would have been to drive down to get her tonight. So eager was I to eat that I took a massive bite and savagely burned the roof of my mouth and gums. I could feel the skin peeling. Then I got what amounted to a paper cut on my thumb knuckle when I peeled back the foil lid on my yoghurt pot.

After dinner it was as much as I could do to keep my eyes open. I’ll draw a line under today and move on.

Training, learning, sharing

The Association training day was held on Saturday. In a parallel universe we would have been meeting together and physically ringing, with pub lunches and some great camaraderie.

With lockdown we’ve moved it to a digital format instead. Whilst we’re not all meeting together, or physically #bellringing, or having a lovely pub lunch, we have been able to meet in small virtual groups using Zoom, we were able to ring using RingingRoom and were able to offer both a lunchtime talk and an evening talk. We may not have been able to do that in the real world.

Considering that only a few months back we were feeling bereft about not being able to ring, the organisers were able to put a great programme together thanks to a few people’s efforts. Yes we’re not meeting face to face but there doesn’t seem to be anything that we can’t do online.

When we are able to get back to the tower together, our learning, experience sharing and skills will have helped us and will put us on a great place to move forward.

When we look at the survival and recovery of #bellringing there are some fantastic resources to support a safe return to the tower and much more to come.

There were 2 fabulous talks during the day, the first on the Association of Ringing Teachers and Central Council of Church Bellringers collaboration on survival and recovery. The second was about the Birmingham School of Bellringing and how it teaches from bell handling up to method ringing. I recorded and uploaded both to our Youtube channel.

An excellent way to spend the day training, learning and sharing.

My new set up

Our back room has been a bit of a tip for quite some time. It used to be step daughter #1’s bedroom. We eventually moved the main PC down and created a one person workspace.

Over time both of us has needed workspace and have had to take it in turns on the main PC or one person on a laptop in the lounge. That’s OK for short meetings and quick pieces of work, but not conducive to longer periods of time when we’ve both wanted to get on with something.

With the Covid-19 situation suggesting that people should work from home if they could, there just wouldn’t be a sensible place for me to do that. I also want a place to put all my #bellringing workbooks etc. And I could be on an evening conference meeting and C could still use the main PC for whatever he wanted to get on with.

We finally agreed that I should have my own desk space so purchased desk and chair, and set about tidying up the junk.

This weekend has seen a couple of trips to the tip and a lot of sorting of boxes and files, but finally created enough space to get the desk installed. I now have my own workspace and comfy chair. I’m actually quite looking forward to doing some work from here.

I also get the window seat, so can watch the birds come and go and gaze out of the window. I mean, concentrate really hard.

Remembrance Ringing

#bellringing traditions run deep. From Christmas morning, New Years Eve, weddings, funerals, but especially Remembrance Sunday.

In 2018 I was the project coordinator for the #Ringingremembers campaign, an initiative to recruit at least 1400 new bellringers to symbolically replace those that were lost during WW1, on the 100th anniversaryof the Armistice. The project was a massive success due to the community spirit in wanting a way to remember those who had died, as well as the hard work put in by the #bellringing community, who recruited and taught new ringers in the months leading up to the anniversary. So successful was the campaign that we recruited over double the original target.

Fast forward 2 years and it was a very different story this Remembrance Sunday. Due to lockdown restrictions #bellringing has been severly curtailed since March, and there hasn’t been a full return to ringing since the first lockdown yet.

Therefore #bellringing this Remembrance Sunday featured the lone tolling of one bell to mark the Nation’s tribute to the fallen. For many ringers this has been one of the most painful days of not being able to ring.

What is worrying is that all the efforts put in 2 years plus ago, might be undone, as we’re nowhere near a return yet. And when we do return, how many of our number won’t? Whether age, infirmities or loss of interest, those who can’t or who have found other things take up their time, I’m sure the number of ringers will have diminished.

The Central Council of Church Bellringers is working hard to keep things going and formulating plans for a return to ringing, but there may not be another hook for us to regain a recruitment campaign in quite the same manner.

As with most #bellringing activities the rewards are commensurate with the amount of effort put in. In the coming months and years we are going to need to put in a huge effort to reap the rewards.

Time to get the thinking caps on and start planning.

7 years thrown away

As the epic clearance of the study continues multiple boxes of our daughters secondary school exercise books have just been deposited at the recycling centre ♻️.

Every book she had written in during her 7 years at high school was kept, for who knows what reason. How long should these thing be kept? She certainly doesn’t want them and they are of no value to anyone, so why do we, as parents, feel the need to keep such stuff?

I did have a flick through some of them and it was pleasing to see some of the teachers’ comments on work that she’d done well, and interesting to see some of the comments on things she hadn’t.

There were also some art and DT things she’d made that are no use to man nor beast. I did seek permission before we embarked on this process and her response was “just get rid“. Clearly she feels no attachment.

Of course we’ve kept school reports, certificates and achievements, but keeping all of this extra stuff seems futile, so why did we do it in the first place?

Everything a child does or produces is precious and important. It was their hard work, so who am I to decide what might be important to her in the future.

I didn’t have this much trouble throwing out my own degree papers. Once it was done, it was finished with. But that was my choice. Throwing out something which technically belongs to someone else is harder.

I suppose its another acknowledgement of the fact that she doesn’t live her anymore. Not permanently any way. Her room will always be her room and she will always have that space to visit or return to if she needs it. She needed it during lockdown #1 but so far lockdown #2 looks more stable from her work perspective, and she has a good flat mate to stay with, who is unlikely to be able to return to his family home.

Just the next phase in parenting. Letting go of those innocent (🤣) years.

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.

Having a clear out

We’re having a tidy up of the study to make room for a second office desk and chair.

Over the years what was step daughter #1’s bedroom became the spare room and eventually we moved the computer out of our bedroom and into this room, therefore redesignating it as the study. However, it also became the junk room.

Over years and years, more and more stuff has been pushed in there as either being “useful one day” or “file it later”. To the point where we can’t actually get anywhere near the other end of the room, and now have no idea whats there. To be honest, a bit embarrassing.

With lockdown #2 now underway and the potential for things to change for me at work, it might be possible, or desirable, for me to work from home from time to time. It would also be more beneficial as I do more #bellringing stuff. C is on the computer quite a lot doing whatever it is he does, so if I had a desk and set up too, I could get on with things. I know that I could sit on the sofa with my laptop but that’s not conducive to a nine and a half hour working day. I need a proper chair and desk.

So, desk and chair have been ordered, although the desired chair was out of stock, so was the second preference, so ended up with third choice, which of course was more expensive, but they’re giving it to us at the same price as the first choice, for the inconvenience.

Had a phone call at 07:30 (!) Thursday morning saying that desk will arrive tomorrow. Eek, better start making room for it then.

Why does tidying up always create more mess? C is making a start as the first hurdles are his. Most of my stuff is at the back of the room, so he’s got to make some headway before I can do much. This is going to take some time. He seems to be checking everything and reading things, and deciding that “that would be useful to hang on to” despite the fact that’s its clearly not been used in many, many years.

There are now bin bags, recycling bags and piles of other stuff accumulating in the lounge, ready for the next phase. This is going to take a while.

Two of my favourite things

With lockdown version 2.0 imminent it seemed rather fortuitous that I have this week off work and we arranged to meet R on her day off, and the weather was on our side too.

A straightforward drive to Surrey, giving R enough time for a bit of a sleep in and to wake up and get ready. We had instructions to deliver a few things. R’s flatmate had to work this afternoon so we only had a brief chance for a hello.

R decided that she would take us for a walk along the Thames Path. They’ve done bits of it between Kingston and Kew but not the whole way. Our plan today was to walk as far as Richmond then decide whether to continue to Kew then get the bus back, or turn around and walk back.

By the time we got to Richmond we decided that is was time for a #latelunch. Having repleated ourselves we agreed to continue on to Kew.

Our journey took us past the Richmond Weir and Teddington Lock. As we were walking back towards the river after lunch we passed the site of Richmond Palace, and I confess to letting out a bit of a squeal whilst taking a photo of the plaque that commemorates the place of so many a Tudor story.

By the time we got to Kew it was dark. We didn’t have to wait long for a bus which stops just around the corner from R’s place.

Given that we may not see her in the flesh again this side of Christmas, I’m so glad that we were able to see her. Thankfulky, she has a protected profession but they are still talking about downsizing during this lockdown, so she’s waiting to hear. Her flatmate will be furloughed again as his job is not protected. Fingers crossed they’ll be OK. I’m glad they have each other and if the tally chart on the fridge was anything to go by, they seem to be good at making their own entertainment. R is winning at hangman, noughts and crosses and pretty much every game they’ve been playing.

My legs are aching but my heart is full, having seen my little girl and seeing for myself that she’s OK.