October/November 2011

Well that was different! We quite often have visiting bands come to ring at Swanage as part of their outing and this month we had two. It was our third visitors that were different! They came from a Rock Climbing centre in Devon to look at the tower from a point of view of abseiling down it to raise money for Christian Aid. I didn’t know that apparently they do this quite often though we were the first tower where they had to climb up through the bells to get to the roof.

Talking of visiting bands: this is often a hit and miss affair with regard to the standard of ringing. When they are excellent ringers you very much hope the townsfolk think it’s you, and when they are not you hope to goodness people don’t think its you! For a general rule of thumb I’d be grateful that when you hear good ringing on a Saturday you think its us and if its bad think there must be a visiting band in town!

I read a lovely article this month in a ringing magazine about older ringers and, in particular, older learners – of which I am most definitely one. It listed all the things that went “wrong” as you got older; declining muscle strength, taking longer to learn new tasks, difficulty with short ‘thinking times’, slowness at learning automatic responses, deteriorating visio-spatial skills, difficulty with memory, aches and pains, failing sight, poor hearing etc etc. It got to the point when I wondered how on earth anyone over a certain age ever managed to learn to ring - but we do and we can! The best thing is though that I now have a list of perfect excuses for whenever I’m ringing badly!

We had Quarter Peal week at the beginning of November, and really quite successful it was too. The "Call a Quarter" challange went well with both Matthew (Plain Bob Minor) and myself (Plain Bob Triples) succeding. Our learner Mike Jenkins scored his first QP ringing the treble to Plain Bob Doubles at Corfe Castle and I scored my first quarter of Royal at Kingston.

Finally this month, it just leaves me to wish each and every one of you “down here” a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from each and every one of us “up here”