A few weeks ago, as part of an on-line discussion of Dorothy L Sayer’s Nine Tailors, I sat down and taught myself Kent Treble Bob (and Oxford Treble Bob for good measure, though that doesn’t appear in the book). On Wednesday I finally got a chance to try this out, at practice at Hemingford Grey. We set out to ring a plain course of Kent Treble Bob Major. I chose to ring bell 6 (because I reckoned that bell 6 or bell 4 would be easiest to keep my place — see below), but there were a number of complications. First, the ringer of the treble had never done any treble bob hunting before, but she did have an experienced ringer standing behind her to help; secondly, at least two of the other ringers were not entirely comfortable with Kent.
Why did I choose bell 6? Because, at the start, after dodging with bell 5, bell 6 next dodges in 3–4 down with the treble, and this means that next two times you find yourself in 3–4 down you have to make places (4ths then 3rds) rather than dodging, and after this second time you immediately dodge with the treble in 1–2 and go ‘into the slow’. All the bells have to do this, but 4 goes straight into the slow from the start, and 6 next time; the other bells have to wait longer for this to happen — more time for a beginner to miss this important work.
So, off we went, and I was pleased that I managed to keep my place throughout, and so did the treble. One of the other ringers was a bit wobbly, but what really threw us was that the conductor — naturally trying to keep track of what these inexperienced ringers were doing — himself went wrong, telling me, for example, to dodge with him in 5–6 when I was in the slow (but I was sure I was right and ignored him). Still, we managed some 5 or so leads of a plain course (which would be 7 leads in total, I think). During those 5 leads I had done all my ‘hard’ work — making places down, doing the slow work at the front, making places up — and was into the ‘ordinary’ work — dodging in 3–4, 5–6, and 7–8 up and down. We immediately had another go at a plain course, but — for the same reasons — this was less successful than the first.
So I was quite pleased with myself: I had rung most of a plain course of Kent Treble Bob Major, and it wasn’t my fault that it had gone wrong!