Over the last few weeks I’ve been learning two new Surprise Major methods: Lincolnshire and Superlative.
Lincolnshire was learnt first, and afer a gap of several weeks when I was unable to make Wednesday night’s practice, I finally got a chance to ring it. Naturally, we didn’t get to the end of the plain course the first time I tried — but I was still quite pleased as it hadn’t failed because of me. We tried again a little later and managed the whole plain course.
With Lincolnshire successfully rung we were challenged to learn Superlative. There’s a group of about five of us at this practice who are all learning these methods together. Fortunately there are enough other more experienced ringers (as well as others less experienced) who can already ring these methods so that we can try with just two or three learners at a time. With all five it would probably be impossible!
Having been set Superlative a couple of weeks ago we had several goes at it last week. I was reasonably confident of having learnt the blue line and the place bells — but as usual we failed first time. Another go and we failed again. Last night a few more tries, and on the second of these we managed to get through a plain course of Superlative Surprise Major. I managed to keep my place, even pretty much remembering where each place bell starts and ends right up until the last few strokes: ringing the 6 meant that in the last lead I was 2nd place bell, and having done the front work I dodged 3/4 up when another ringer called to me, ‘With me,’ and that was sufficient to make me wonder where I was meant to be, rather than just doing it! After a pull or two I realized that I should now be doing 5–6 places up, so I hung around in 5–6 trying to work out just where I should be. This was enough to get us to the end of the plain course, since the 2nd place bell stays in 5–6 until the lead end.
Try harder next time, but not bad, I guess.
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