Thinking allowed

Surprise, surprise (continued)

In learn­ing the blue line for Cam­bridge Sur­prise Minor we have looked first at what hap­pens when you make ‘Cam­bridge places’. Next we will look at the back work and the front work. (The warn­ing giv­en before still applies: if you are read­ing this and try­ing to learn Cam­bridge, then don’t assume that the instruc­tions here are right. I am doing this from memory as part of my own learn­ing process.)

The back work in Cam­bridge is like this:

double dodge 5–6 up, lie behind, dodge 5–6 down with the treble, make 5th place (below the treble), dodge 5–6 up with the treble, lie behind, double dodge 5–6 down.

And we can draw this in dia­gram­mat­ic form, like this:

-1-x
1x- double dodge 5–6 up
-1x
1-x-
1-x
1-x-
1-x two blows at the back
—-1x and dodge 5–6 down with the treble
—-x1
—-1x
—-x1 make 5th place below the treble
—-x1
—-1x and dodge 5–6 up with the treble
—-x1
—-1x two blows at the back
1-x
1-x- and double dodge 5–6 down
1-x
1-x-
-1x
1x-
-1-xand con­tin­ue

Next, we come to the front work, which is some­thing like this:

dodge 1–2 down, lead full, dodge 1–2 up, make 2nd place, lead full, dodge 1–2 up with the treble, make 2nd place over the treble, dodge 1–2 down with the treble, lead full, make 2nd place, dodge 1–2 down, lead full, dodge 1–2 up, and continue.

Got that? Per­haps a dia­gram will help:

x1
-x1- start with a dodge 1–2 down
x—-1
-x1
x1- lead
x—-1
-x1- and dodge 1–2 up
x1
-x1make 2nd place
-x-1
x-1lead again
x1—-
1x—- dodge 1–2 up with the treble
x1—-
1x—- make 2nd place over the treble
1x—-
x1—- dodge 1–2 down with the treble
1x—-
x1—- and lead agan
x-1
-x-1make 2nd place again
-x1
x1dodge 1–2 down
-x1-
x—-1 lead
x1-
-x1 dodge 1–2 up
x—-1
-x1-
x1 and onward

Now we have each of the com­pon­ents of Cam­bridge Sur­prise Minor. We just have to put them togeth­er, along with a few more dodges and some plain hunting.

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Surprise, surprise

I went yes­ter­day to prac­tice at Hem­ing­ford Grey. Although the tower cap­tain there is away on an exten­ded hol­i­day, this is still a weekly gath­er­ing of more exper­i­enced ringers. At the end of the prac­tice I was asked, ‘What meth­od are you learn­ing at the moment?’ Hmm, I thought, ‘Noth­ing really, busy run­ning prac­tices and teach­ing some begin­ners.’ Back came the sug­ges­tion ‘You could start hav­ing a look at Cambridge.’

So, I had a quick look at Cam­bridge Sur­prise Minor in Steve Cole­man to see what is involved. I also glanced at Cam­bridge Sur­prise major, and quickly decided that I’d con­cen­trate on Minor for now. If the Hem­ing­ford cap­tain were around he’d prob­ably throw me into the deep end with Major (as he threw me into Sted­man Triples and Kent Treble Bob Major without first try­ing Doubles and Minor).

Any­way, after read­ing what Cole­man has to say on the sub­ject, the next step is to com­mit this to memory, and part of that pro­cess is to regur­git­ate it here. (Warn­ing: if you are read­ing this and try­ing to learn Cam­bridge, then don’t assume that the instruc­tions here are right. I am doing this from memory as part of my own learn­ing process.)

We can divide a plain course of Cam­bridge into sev­er­al pieces of work: the front work, the back work, and the places, which com­bined with a couple of oth­er dodges, and some pieces of plain hunt, make up the method.

Cole­man calls the places the most dif­fi­cult bit, but they looked fairly easy to remem­ber to me (though per­haps not so easy to remem­ber when ringing, of course). Places are made in 3–4 up and in 3–4 down. Cam­bridge places in 3–4 up work as follows:

dodge 3–4 up, make 4ths place, make 3rds place, dodge 3–4 up, make 4ths place, make 3rds place, dodge 3–4 up

That’s it. Cam­bridge places down are the exact oppos­ite of this:

dodge 3–4 down, make 3rds place, make 4ths place, dodge 3–4 down, make 3rds place, make 4ths place, dodge 3–4 down

If I remem­ber cor­rectly, then the dodge in the middle of the places work is made with the treble.

So, we can build a skel­et­on dia­gram of this, show­ing the treble and the bell mak­ing places.

First, Cam­bridge places up:

-x1
x-1- dodge 3–4 up
x-1
x1
x1- make 4ths place
x-1
x-1- make 3rds place
x1
1xdodge 3–4 up with the treble
x1
1xmake 4ths place
-1-x
1-xmake 3rds place
-1x
1xdodge 3–4 up
1-x
-1-x
1x- and con­tin­ue

And secondly, Cam­bridge places down:

1x-
-1-xdodge 3–4 down
1-x
1x
-1xmake 3rds place
1-x
-1-xmake 4ths place
1x
x1dodge 3–4 down with the treble
1x
x1make 3rds place
x-1-
x-1 make 4ths place
x1-
x1 dodge 3–4 down
x-1
x-1-
-x1 and con­tin­ue

That’s enough for now. Next we’ll look at the front work and the back work, and then we’ll put it all togeth­er.

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Grandsire Caters

This after­noon saw the Annu­al Meet­ing of the Hunt­ing­don Dis­trict of the Ely Dio­ces­an Asso­ci­ation. Last year we hos­ted this at our own tower in St Ives. This year it was the turn of St Neots, which has a 10-bell tower. As I have nev­er rung at a 10-bell tower before this was some­thing of a chal­lenge. And a ten­or bell of some 29cwt — ours is a mere 12cwt, so the bells are con­sid­er­ably heav­ier than I am used to. The tower at St Neots is large and spa­cious, cer­tainly com­pared with the few oth­er towers I’ve been in. Here is a com­fort­able ringing cham­ber, 30 feet or so up the tower, with plenty of space for the 10 ropes to fall nicely in a large circle, and room around the ringers to sit or stand.

Soon after I arrived the ringing mas­ter called for a plain course of Bob Roy­al — that’s on all ten bells — and I decided to stand behind one of the ringers (bell 7) and see what it was like.

Then some call changes were rung, and I had a go at this, partly to get a feel for the bells, but even so I man­aged to make a few mis­takes. Sigh. I sat down, not entirely impressed with myself.

Next the ringing mas­ter called for a touch of Grand­sire Caters — that’s 9 bells, and a ten­or cov­er. I stayed in my seat, but was even­tu­ally per­suaded to ring bell 7, with an exper­i­enced ringer stand­ing along­side me. Now in the­ory I can ring a touch of Grand­sire Triples, and Caters is ‘only’ a couple more dodging places in 8–9 up and down. The bobs and singles are the same as for Triples. And then there’s the extra two ropes — count­ing my place up to ninth place was one thing, but could I see what was hap­pen­ing amidst all those ropes?

So, start­ing on 7, I dodged with 6 and then up to the back — easy because it is over 8 and 9. Down to the lead is still okay because the bells are still just plain hunt­ing (so every oth­er bell: up the even num­bers and down the odds). Then as I came off the lead a Bob was called. ‘You’re in the hunt now,’ said the friendly voice at my side; ‘Thanks,’ I thought grate­fully, vaguely aware of the fact. (Hind­sight is a won­der­ful thing: I star­ted by dodging 6–7 up, so I knew my next dodge would be 4–5 up; I should have also con­sidered that a bob at that point would mean mak­ing 3rds place and going into the hunt; I should not have been sur­prised, but some­how I had not thought about what to do at a bob — let alone the inev­it­able single.)

Still, plain hunt­ing is nice and easy, except that it’s on 10 bells, well 9 bells, because the ten­or is just cov­er­ing. Oh, and the treble is always the last bell when you’re in the hunt in Grand­sire, so I only had to worry about 8 bells. And in fact that’s only 7 oth­er bells. But with all these ropes, that’s still quite hard to see, cer­tainly when you’ve not done it before. It was a bit like ringing Major for the first time — then I could see my place when I was in 2nd or 3rd, and when I was in 7th or 6th, and some­where in the middle was 4th and 5th. Here, how­ever, I could see my place when I was in 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and when I was in 9th, 8th, 7th. And some­where in the middle was 5th place and 6th. So ring at about the right place and hope for the best! ‘Bob!’ came the call and I double-dodged 4–5 down, com­ing out of the hunt. Now carry on plain hunt­ing, and remem­ber that you have to dodge 6–7 down next time.

I don’t remem­ber the exact details of the touch, but there were a num­ber of oth­er bobs, which had me, for example, double-dodging in 8–9 up. And there was anoth­er call of ‘Single!’ Help, what do I do at a single?! Anoth­er friendly word from my mind­er put me right, and the touch con­tin­ued and even­tu­ally completed.

Every­one seemed to think I’d done quite well, although per­haps they were just being polite. For myself, I thought I did just about tol­er­ably, and it was an inter­est­ing exper­i­ence: my ropesight was pretty good, just about good enough to cope with ringing Caters (though prob­ably not good enough to ring Roy­al); my strik­ing and hand­ling could be improved, espe­cially when ringing these heavy bells, some­what heav­ier than I am used to; and I need to com­mit Grand­sire to memory just a little bet­ter — I really shouldn’t have been caught out going into the hunt, and I ought to remem­ber about singles and what to do at one.

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a touch of Kent Treble Bob

Oh dear! I have been dis­covered! My ringing teach­er said to me at Monday’s prac­tice, ‘I was look­ing at your web­site…’. I shall have to be care­ful what I write!

His revenge was to tell me to learn a touch of Kent Treble Bob, the ‘blue line’ of which I learnt a few months ago, and I have had one attempt at ringing a plain course.

When ‘Bob’ is called, the treble is, of course, unaf­fected, and so are the two bells which are going into, or com­ing out of, the slow.

The bells which are dodging in 5–6 and above make two extra dodges — three dodges in all, rather than one.

One bell makes the bob: the bell which is mak­ing 3rds and 4ths places up the second time. It makes 3rds and 4ths up, and then imme­di­ately rings 4ths and 3rds down, and goes straight down to the lead. It has become the bell mak­ing 3rds and 4ths down the first time, so it will make 3rds and 4ths down again next time, and then go back into the slow.

The bells which triple dodge at the back con­tin­ue in their treble bob course. Each of them is delayed in mak­ing 3rds and 4ths down by one lead end (because the bell which made the bob has pushed itself in, instead).

Remem­ber that you know you will have to make 3rds and 4ths down for the first time in the next lead end — because you dodge 3–4 down with the treble. So you ‘just’ have to notice when you are dodging with the treble in that position.

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'oranges and lemons'

… say the bells of St Clement’s.

But ringing St Clem­ent’s Major is anoth­er mat­ter. There we were, ringing rounds, and about to ring a touch of some­thing, when the con­duct­or (on bell 7) turned to me (bell 6) and said, ‘We’ll ring St Clem­ent’s’ and then pro­ceeded to explain(!) ‘It’s the reverse dodging order of Bob Major. And you make reverse 3rds. And you do some dodging at the front.’ Or some­thing like that.

So off we went, and start­ing from 6th place I hunted down to 3rd, made 3rds place and back up to the back, 2 blows at the back and then down towards the front, dodging 3–4 down on the way, and then start dodging at the front. Bell 4 seemed quite happy to be dodging with me, but the con­duct­or at this point decided some­thing had gone wrong and called rounds. But, even assum­ing that I had not already gone wrong, I don’t think there was any way that I could have man­aged to com­plete the plain course. A little home­work is necessary… 

(more…)

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Kent Treble Bob Major

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!

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bobs in Grandsire

I need to get my head around bobs in Grand­sire Triples.

In Grand­sire, the treble always plain hunts, and in a plain course one oth­er bell plain hunts after it — bell 2 when start­ing from rounds. This oth­er bell is said to be ‘in the hunt’. At a bob this bell leaves the hunt and joins the oth­er bells in hunt­ing and dodging, and one of the oth­er bells joins the hunt in its place. How does this work?

If we are ringing bell 3, then start­ing from rounds we ring one blow at hand­stroke in third place and then hunt down to the lead, up to the back, and down again. Then we dodge in 4–5 down. The plain course con­tin­ues with dodges in 6–7 down, 6–7 up, and 4–5 up. Then we make 3rds place, which brings us back to rounds.

When a bob is called the dodges are changed in the fol­low­ing way: the bell mak­ing 3rds place is unaf­fected and each of the oth­er bells skips the dodge it would have done and instead double dodges the next dodge, so to speak. This has the fol­low­ing effect:

  • if we were going to make 3rds, then make 3rds as nor­mal (‘last thirds’)
  • if we were going to dodge 4–5 down, then instead double-dodge 6–7 down
  • if we were going to dodge 6–7 down, then instead double-dodge 6–7 up
  • if we were going to dodge 6–7 up, then instead double-dodge 4–5 up

but:

  • if we were going to dodge 4–5 up, then instead make 3rds place (‘first 3rds’) and join the hunt

and con­versely

  • if we were in the hunt, then instead double-dodge 4–5 down, leav­ing the hunt.

In this bob, two bells each make 3rds place — first the bell which would have dodged 4–5 up, but which makes 3rds and goes into the hunt. This bell makes ‘first 3rds’ at the bob. Secondly, the bell which was going to make 3rds any­way — it does so and con­tin­ues in the nor­mal way, unaf­fected by the bob. This bell makes ‘last 3rds’ at the bob.

When set down in this way it is fairly easy to remem­ber. All that has to be done is to remem­ber this in the heat of the moment: that is, know which dodge you are about to do next, and con­sider in advance what you must do if a bob hap­pens to be called. There, touches of Grand­sire Triples made easy! Except that we have not yet con­sidered the ques­tion of calls of ‘Single!’.

Foot­note (24 August 2004): A fur­ther point about bobs in Grand­sire Triples, is that when a bob is called you double-dodge in the place you are in at the moment of the call (unless you were going to dodge 4–5 up, in which case you make 3rds and go into the hunt).

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Stedman and Grandsire

Had a few more attempts at ringing Sted­man at Hem­ing­ford Grey last night. We rang a couple of plain courses of doubles: first time I rang bell num­ber 2, and after­wards I tried num­ber 3. Both times I got it right. Later in the even­ing — after more ringers had turned up — we rang triples. I rang bell 4, and star­ted off mak­ing a mess of things. I was imme­di­ately put right by the con­duct­or (‘lead now!’), and from then on I was okay. I real­ized at the time that I had prob­ably gone wrong in exactly the same way as I had done the very first time I had tried to ring Sted­man. But I could not see at all what I was doing wrong.

Later, when driv­ing home, I worked out what I had prob­ably done on both occa­sions. Bell num­ber 4 starts by dodging once with 5 (i.e., from ringing in 4th place at rounds, you ring one blow in 5th, one blow in 4th, and then ‘go in slow’, that is, two blows in 3rd place and down to the lead). I had for­got­ten to do the dodge with 5, instead try­ing to go in slow imme­di­ately with the two blows in 3rd place. Obvi­ously some­thing to remem­ber — not just ‘go in slow’, but ‘dodge 4/5 down’ first.

We also tried to ring a touch of Grand­sire Triples, with me ringing bell 6. In a plain course of Grand­sire Triples there are dodges in 4/5 up, 6/7 up, 6/7 down, 4/5 down, and then make 3rds. But I haven’t got the hang of bobs in this meth­od yet. Ringing 6 the first dodge is in 6/7 up, but a bob called before this means do a double-dodge in 4/5 up; anoth­er bob was called as I was about to make 3rd — which is unaf­fected by the call. We did this a couple of times, then a bob was called in some oth­er pos­i­tion, and I was some­what lost. We struggled to the fin­ish­ing post which was by then in sight. More work needed to under­stand bobs in Grandsire…

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ringing Stedman

After some hints at last Wednesday’s prac­tice at Hem­ing­ford Grey, I have spent a while get­ting to grips with Sted­man, a meth­od (or rather a prin­ciple) devised in the 1670s. A couple of things helped me. First, when I began to learn to ring, Sted­man was the first meth­od that I learnt to ring a cov­er bell to, and one of the things I did was to learn the pat­tern in which pairs of bells come to the back. In a note­book I had sketched this out, writ­ing out a plain course of the last two bells — the first time I had done this. The second help was that I spent an hour each way on the train to Lon­don, and decided to use it to work out the full plain course for Sted­man Doubles. Turn­ing to the back of the note­book I had with me I found my notes of 18 months earli­er which I had entirely for­got­ten about.

Sted­man is based on the two orders in which you can arrange six bells. There are only six ways you can arrange six bells, and in ringing there are only two ways of arran­ging these six dif­fer­ent changes, since a bell can only exchange places with its nearest neigh­bour (or stay in the same place). These two ways can be con­sidered as: ‘for­ward hunt­ing’ in which the bell in first place hunts to third place, and then down to the front again; and ‘back­ward hunt­ing’ where the bell in third place hunts down to the front, leads, and hunts back up to third place again. Sted­man con­sists of each of these ‘sixes’ per­formed altern­ately. At the end of each ‘six’ the bell in third place moves out of the front three into fourth place, and the bell which was in fourth place moves down to take its place. And dur­ing each ‘six’ the bells in fourth and fifth places dodge with each other.

Armed with this inform­a­tion, you can then work out a plain course of Sted­man Doubles, or indeed Triples.

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Then came the moment of truth, this Wed­nes­day. ‘Did you have a look at Sted­man?’ I am asked. ‘Right, we’ll ring Sted­man Triples.’ So we rang Sted­man Triples — and I made a com­plete hash of it. Very annoy­ing, hav­ing put some effort into thor­oughly learn­ing the ‘blue line’, and know­ing exactly what I was sup­posed to be doing — but actu­ally try­ing to remem­ber that and ring at the same time was too much. Later in the prac­tice we had anoth­er go, with me again ringing bell num­ber 4. This time — I got it right, and we rang a plain course of Sted­man Triples without me going wrong. I guess my strik­ing could have been bet­ter, but I nev­er lost my place, knew what I should be doing, and was always more or less in the right place. Phew! Now to do it a lot better.

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singles

For quite a while now prac­tice has involved ringing touches of bob doubles, minor, triples, and even bob major, in which the con­duct­or has called vari­ous bobs. So it came as some­thing of a sur­prise tonight when a ‘single’ was called a short way into a touch of bob triples. Of course, I had no idea what to do, and as I was (or should have been) affected by the call, since I would oth­er­wise have been dodging 3/4 up, the whole thing went wrong. Oh well, that’s what prac­tice nights are for.

So we had anoth­er go, after it was explained what I should be doing: if dodging 3/4 up then instead make fourth’s place, hunt to the front, and next time dodge 5/6 down; and if dodging 3/4 down then make third’s place, hunt to the back and next time make second’s place. In oth­er words, the bells that would oth­er­wise be dodging 3/4 up and 3/4 down effect­ively swap places. And it worked! We got through the touch without fur­ther errors, a single being called twice with me affected. Phew!

So in the­ory I can now ring any touch of Plain Bob. We shall see.

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