November 2010

Brrrrr the tower is very cold! Luckily we do have two heaters and even though ringing warms you up last night’s practice (Dec 1st) saw us all ringing in jumpers.

The beginning of November was the Salisbury Diocesan Guild of Ringers Quarter Peal week. The aim of this week is not just to encourage quarter peal ringing in general but more specifically to encourage ringers to attempt to ring something they haven’t rung before. I organised six quarter peals during the week of which we got three and lost three. Martin got a quarter of Grandsire Doubles ringing the treble and I got my first quarter peal on handbells ringing Plain Bob Minimus and my first quarter ringing Plain Bob Caters on an inside bell. We’ll gloss over the ones we lost!

You will see from the above that method names, eg Plain Bob, are followed by words such as Doubles, Triples, Major etc . This indicates the number of bells involved in the method and are as follows:
Singles – 3 bells, Minimus - 4 bells, Doubles - 5 bells, Minor - 6 bells, Triples – 7 bells, Major – 8 bells, Caters – 9 bells, Royal – 10 bells, Cinques – 11 bells, Maximus - 12 bells, Sextuples – 13 bells, Fourteen – 14 bells and Septuples – 15. Methods with odd number bells often have another bell, the tenor, ringing constantly at the back.

November is also the month for half muffled ringing with Service ringing and two quarter peals on Remembrance Sunday. There is something very haunting yet beautiful about half muffled ringing. The only problem being that it is slightly soporific and tends to send the ringers off into a dream like trance taking them longer than normal to ring the quarter peal! I rang in both quarter peals on Remembrance Sunday and scored personal firsts in methods called Ashford Little Bob Triples and Middlesex Bob Triples.

On the 21st November the Swanage Ringers made a First in the history of quarter peals by ringing a quarter peal whilst wearing Pudsey Bear “ears” and in so doing, raised £32.50 for Children in Need. Of course we chose to ring Pudsey Surprise Major!

As the year comes to a close, I would like to thank you all for your support and encouragement since I took over as Tower Captain. One of the pleasures of taking over this post has been meeting you and getting to know you.

Finally all of us “up here” wish you all a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.