During the coronavirus lockdown, BellBoard is dominated by handbell performances. There are also a few performances on newly-developed remote ringing websites such as ringingroom.com. Real handbell ringing, however, is restricted to people who have ringers and bells in the same house. Some people are lucky enough to have 6-bell or even 8-bell bands on the premises, but there's also a lot of 4-bell ringing.

Since the lockdown started, I have counted more than 40 bands publishing handbell performances on BellBoard. Many of these are by people who we don't normally see ringing handbell quarters or peals, and there are some footnotes indicating that family members are being driven (or dragged) to take up handbell ringing because of the lack of other things to do.

It would be great if some of these new handbell ringers keep it up when life returns to normal. Clearly there are a lot of people out there with bells and the ability to ring them, and they will have the opportunity to step up from minimus to minor and beyond when it becomes possible to get together with non-family members again.

If any of you are reading this blog: what you need to progress beyond minimus is "Change-Ringing on Handbells Volume 1". It starts with plain hunting on four, then covers Plain Bob Minimus and proceeds to plain hunting on six and Plain Bob Minor.