Yesterday we completed a project by ringing a peal of Stedman Triples: myself, Tina, Julia Cater and Matt Durham. Very satisfying. I think it was the fifth time we had got together to try it (note that I carefully didn't write "it was the fifth attempt"!) and we have been getting steadily more reliable and resilient. The peal yesterday was really  good, with just one small kerfuffle lasting two or three sixes (my fault, I think).

Julia conducted from the tenors, and Matt is a Stedman expert and able to do some putting-right when necessary, so it was a good team effort. The composition was this one by Philip Saddleton, which I think is also the one that Mark Eccleston suggested several years ago when I asked him about straightforward compositions.

5040 Stedman Triples
Philip A B Saddleton

 231456   2  S  H  L  Q  14
 --------------------------
 346125  [S
(324156)           X     S]
 256143      X  X
 543162      X  X
 462135      X  X
 614325      X  X     X
 125346      X  X
 --------------------------
10 part

Call s2.L.L.s14 for first course in part 1.
Omit bracketed calls in part 6.

I spent some time trying to understand the structure of the composition, so I will write another article about that later. I wanted to try to follow along yesterday, but I didn't always manage because it was diverting a bit too much concentration from ringing my bells. Well done Julia for calling confidently and perfectly.

For once, everything proceeded exactly according to plan!

We started by slotting in an extra quarter on Friday evening. When I discovered that Matt would be arriving relatively early, I thought I'd better organise something to occupy us for the evening, so we rang Bob Major for Zoé's first handbell...

We rang another quarter of Stedman last week, this time with Julia conducting. There was a false start but after that we rang well, and Julia did some impressive correcting of mistakes. We're not ringing this week, but next week it's my turn to conduct, which I will do from...