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 last week was not so successful. First we lost a peal of 4-spliced surprise major (CYNR) using the Rob Lee composition that I have written about before. I don't have anything new to say about the composition, but after all the online ringing I found the faster pace of live ringing a little difficult to keep up with. Never mind, it will come back.
Yesterday we tried Bristol Royal again but with a different band placing, and it didn't go. We had a useful practice session though. I wondered whether ringing the tenors would make it easier for me to see what the other bells are doing, and to some extent it did. On the other hand, ringing 7-8 makes it easy to pinpoint all the landmarks (points and wrong dodges) because in almost all cases, one or other bell is involved.
It wasn't a completely unsuccessful week because I did manage an online quarter of Glasgow with the Five O'Clock Club. My online ringing is decreasing, partly because I have been going to my office more and partly because we are doing more ringing with our own band (including a new online evening session with some handbell learners from Glasgow, which I or Tina should write about at some point).
Coming up next week: a Cambridge Maximus session, as Jonathan's brother Alex will be visiting. We have assigned pairs in advance so that everyone can prepare, and the idea is to attempt a plain course and if we get to the end, call a single and continue with a quarter peal composition. It's a while since we've tried Cambridge Max, so it will be interesting to see whether any of our general advancement will be applicable.