A couple of generations ago, nearly every ringer could complete a plain course of Plain Bob Minor in hand - it was a part of learning to ring.  A friend of mine has recounted how she learned in a classroom, with all the ringers holding two bells (not necessarily a...

Most of my online ringing in the last couple of months has been with Gareth Davies' Five O'Clock Handbell Club. The way it works is that Gareth sends an email on Thursday with suggested quarters for the following week. Everyone who wants to can say which quarters they would like...

We didn't get the quarter of Bristol on Monday. I got a bit lost in a way that would have been easily recoverable in live ringing, but proved impossible to retrieve with the constraints of online ringing. It was a good attempt though, with accurate ringing up until the big kerfuffle...

I have written before about how following the coursing order can help with remembering a composition, and here is another example.

On Monday we are going for a quarter of Bristol with Alex Frye (it's going to be on Ringing Room because we currently have a local lockdown in...

We used to write a monthly round-up of other people's handbell activities, highlighting firsts and notable performances. After a while it became too much effort to keep up, so we stopped, but there have been some interesting peals recently, so here's a summary.

Although there's a lot of online ringing...

Yesterday we had another go at a quarter of Little Bob Maximus in Ringing Room, and succeeded. There were a few tricky patches with delays, but nothing as bad as in the previous attempt. We finished in just under an hour.

There still haven't been many 12-bell quarters online: 4...

Yesterday evening was the weekly Handbell Stadium practice, which I joined after having missed a couple of weeks. As usual there was a lot of interest in Double Norwich, so I rang a couple of courses. Then there was a suggestion of Duffield.

If you're not familiar with Duffield, it's a major...

Two lost online quarters this week, in contrast to the three successes last week.

Yesterday was an attempt for Cambridge Major, silent and non-conducted. The idea was to meet in Ringing Room and not set up an audio channel (usually we use Zoom); also not to use the chat in...

Lots of handbell ringing, in person and online:

• Last Monday: Cambridge Royal practice session with Jonathan, Angela and Peter. Different band placing, partly determined by social distancing requirements: Angela on 3-4, me on trebles, Tina conducting.
• Last Wednesday: online quarter of Stedman Triples. I still find that Stedman takes a lot...

Three years after our last attempt at Grandsire Caters, today I called a quarter in Ringing Room. It took us a little while to get into it (actually it took us a little while even to get started, because we met with seven people of whom two were expecting...