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.

This isn't a handbell article, except in as much as we might hope eventually to ring on handbells anything that we are ringing in the tower. But I want to write about some compositions, so here goes.

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