At the end of practice at St Ives tonight we rang a touch of Bob Doubles, and I volunteered to call it. I rang the 5 bell and called three ‘Homes’, i.e., called ‘Bob’ each time I came back to do my 4 blows in 5th place. The third time brought us straight back to rounds. This is the first time I have called a touch, and it was reasonably successful. I probably should have called ‘Bob’ fractionally earlier — when the treble was at backstroke before leading, rather than when I was about to pull at backstroke. And although I was unaffected by the bobs, I still managed to get slightly muddled in between so that I half missed a dodge. Fortunately I was able to recover and hadn’t lost my place. Of course, I could have chosen any of the inside bells (2,3,4 or 5) and still called three Homes. Must try and remember that next time — a disadvantage of ringing 5 with this touch is that the final bob brings the bells immediately to rounds, which doesn’t give much time for saying ‘That’s all’.
Next time!
0 CommentsThis evening for the first time I had to lead bellringing practice. We only had six ringers (seven ringers for the first half), and just one of those was an experienced ringer, former tower captain Bob King. So we rang rounds and call changes for the seven of us, and plain hunting on four for the five of us. Our two less-experienced plain hunters had only done this on the treble before, so after a few goes at this, we had each of them have a try at the second bell, with me ringing the tenor behind. After a little while at this for each of them, we were able to plain hunt on five without the tenor covering. And I got quite a bit of practice at calling ‘go’ and ‘stop’ — the latter being the harder one to know when to call!
0 CommentsFor some time now I have been practising ringing touches of bob doubles, and even bob minor, bob triples and bob major. I have mostly got the hang of the necessary dodges, and can start on any bell, and I can usually cope with the calls of bob, though I can only do this by remembering the sequence, or cycle of work, and not by noticing signposts such as when I cross the treble’s path (although this is occasionally obvious, especially when making 2nds’ place). And in the even-bell methods, where there is no cover bell always in last place from which to lead, I can now usually see the last bell rope go down, so that I can lead appropriately.
Tonight I got to ‘call’ various plain courses of bob doubles, bob triples and bob minor. The hard part at this stage is to know when to call the end of the method — calls should be made when the lead bell is at handstroke, a full stroke before the method ends, and where your bell is at this point depends on which bell you are ringing. Of course, harder than this is calling a touch with bobs (and singles) and getting back to rounds at the end of it; and being able to correct other ringers if they are about to go wrong. I’m definitely a long way from that. Still, progress is being made.
Now we have two of our ‘new’ ringers who can just about ring touches of plain bob doubles and triples, and we have four who can, with varying degrees of success, plain hunt to these (and other) methods. We need to get some of these other ringers to be able to ring ‘inside’ to plain bob — then we will be able to try plain courses on Sunday mornings and weddings when we are not assisted by more experienced ringers.
0 CommentsWe held another ringers’ meeting: Bob King was elected Tower Captain, and I was elected Tower Vice Captain. Sue Bates had earlier been chosen as Secretary so we now have a proper set of officers for our new band. Bob King was a member of the earlier band, so again, there is continuity with that band, as well as the necessary experience of these ringers. We would be hard pressed to ring without them.
0 CommentsMichael tried getting me to call some changes. First calling the treble up over each other bell (to 7th), then 2 over the others etc, until it comes back into rounds.
Later he had me try and call to ‘Queen’s’ (13572468) but I couldn’t get my head around this at the time.
As usual, a bit of thinking after the practice reveals that you need to call 6 up one place over 7, 4 up two places over 5 and 7, and 2 up 3 places over 3, 5 and 7; and then get them back of course.
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