Ringing

I posted in 2019 (pre-pandemic) that I was fed up with bellringing. Largely I still am, so I invited a friend round for coffee and a chat (Hello JM!) but it had to be short as I was due on a Zoom call.

A few suggestions were considered and, afterwards, I did dig out my methods book to revise the 4 easier surprise major methods I used to ring. Cambridge and Yorkshire Major are pretty familiar; after all, I was ringing Yorkshire in 1981 when I did my PGCE but I have not progressed much since then. I learnt Lincolnshire and Superlative but need them so little these days.

I am not suggesting that I want to be ringing multi-methods peals or new methods, just that it is a "man cannot live by bread alone" situation.

Learning new things is a process which changes over time and one's reasons for doing so also change. When one is a child one likes parental attention when one has achieved something new: "Look at me Mummy!" When I was a young organist the flower ladies took an interest in me and encouraged me so I practised harder.

In the early days of ringing one passes through various firsts.

• 1st quarter on the treble
• 1st quarter inside
• 1st treble bob
  
• 1st quarter in a particular method
• 1st quarter of surprise
• 1st quarter as conductor
• 1st peal
• 1st Major / Caters / Royal / Cinques / Maximus
  

I have grown out of bothering about 'firsts' but there are many ringers who have not! In the Ringing World you will find

• Circled the tower
• Circled the tower as conductor
• Complete the Standard 8
• Completes the Alphabet!
• Has now rung a peal on every day of the year (not the same year)
• 100th peal together (persons A and B)

What I really need is a ringing friend but I've never had one although I have friends who are ringers. I've never had a phone call of the type "Hi John, I'm going to the Wednesday practice at Bongtown; do you want to come?" (I tried to teach my [now ex-] wife to ring but it was a dismal failure and my children were not interested.)

Bellringing is very much a pastime in which there is a great deal of one-upmanship, I feel, and there is a hierarchy or pecking order. Ringing also involves people and 'there is nowt so queer as folk' to the extent that ringers get set in their ways and acquire bad habits. On the flip side I know 3 ringers (2 now in their 70s and 1 in his 80s) who are a delight just to watch ringing. Two of them ring a heavy bell with absolute ease, whilst the third makes it look more physical but in a balletic kind of way: he is very tall so has had to work on his skills.

Having written all this, it seems to me that whereas ringing was a way of making friends in the past (although teenagers can fall out, believe me) I am essentially a lonely person - probably because I am a perfectionist and I don't like to take risks. Thus my jaded view of bellringing is caused by the fact that it is not yielding the close or multiple friendships which I feel others in the fraternity seem to have.

I seem to be invisible. I have been to quarterly or monthly meetings and everyone else has been engaged in conversation whilst I have stood on my own - ignored. I cite an older previous post.