The Albany Quadrant weekly band and our experience at learning together is what inspired the beginnings of this blog. Starting with a very wide range of experience (from none to quite a lot), we have all expanded what we can ring in different ways. Besides learning as individuals, there is a separate 'band' entity, which has a dynamic of its own, different from when we each ring with other bands. Our weekly band consists (most of the time) of Simon, Tina, Angela and Jonathan, with occasional visits from Marcus and Nick.
A few weeks ago we temporarily suspended the Glasgow tower-bell practice and had a Ringing Room session. Peter and I found ourselves ringing two bells each for a course of London Minor, which was a first for Peter. Thus inspired, the next time Angela wasn't available for handbell ringing we...
Last week we had a live ringing session with Jessica, who we have been teaching in Ringing Room. We spent some time working on handbell ringing style and adapting to the delay between starting the physical movement and the bell sounding. After an evening's practice we were pretty well up...
We had a good crack at Cambridge Maximus on Monday, but didn't quite get to the end of a quarter. Nevertheless, it was a satisfying evening, as it's a while since we've tried it and usually we have struggled to ring a plain course. We've booked another attempt next Thursday...
It's been three weeks since my last article, and in that time we rang two quarters of 6-spliced surprise major (the old-fashioned standard eight without London and Pudsey). That made 9 quarters with no losses since we restarted live handbell ringing in June - a remarkable winning streak.
However, the...
Yesterday Nick dropped in for a quarter, as he was passing through Glasgow and had some time between trains. After a bit of debate and method revision, we agreed to ring spliced Cambridge, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Royal. It was the first time we had tried spliced royal with an Albany...
On Monday we had an expedition to Angela's house, for the first time in more than a year, and rang a quarter of Bristol Royal. This was very satisfying - although we rang a quarter with Nick a couple of years ago, after several attempts, we had not previously practised...
Yesterday we rang with our 10-bell band, all together in person, and scored a quarter of Littleport. This was very satisfying because I think the only time we've rung a whole course before was in Ringing Room, with some quite difficult internet delays. But yesterday we just sat down...
Sometimes described as "poor man's Bristol Royal", Littleport extends Bristol Major to Royal by turning the treble around in 8th place, maintaining the pattern of points and fishtails at the back, and filling in with triples dodge above the treble across the half lead. The same idea works for maximus...
Yesterday we rang a quarter of Lincolnshire Royal, which is what we had been planning to ring way back on 16th March just before the lockdown started. 18 weeks, feeling like a lifetime ago. We suffered a bit from ringing in a large not-quite-circle - it's definitely more difficult when...
Now we are allowed to meet with three households indoors, we got our handbell band together in person this evening. We set out a large triangle with Jonathan and Angela at one vertex, Peter at another, and Tina and me at the third. With a suitable assignment of pairs (Angela 1-2...