We've had a few sessions of practising Remus, making some progress, but yesterday we tried a different approach. It was partly inspired by one of Mary Jones's blogs. What had been happening was that we were ringing in "quarter peal mode" even though we were still at the stage of trying to get through a plain course - continuing as far as possible even if some of us were getting lost. It was getting frustrating because we were trying to ring while lost, and I was trying to be the conductor even though I hadn't mastered the method myself. I, for one, wasn't finding it very enjoyable.

So yesterday we agreed that we would try to ring a plain course, but anyone could say "stand" at any point if they were lost, with no questions asked. We would then restart, perhaps after some discussion about what had gone wrong. There was always the option of either starting again from the beginning, or from a later lead end to focus on a tricky section.

It went well and I think we all enjoyed it. After about an hour we had rung every lead, some of them many times, but not a whole course. When we weren't getting lost the ringing was very good. We're getting to know the landmarks and how key pieces of work fit together.

None of the above is specific to any particular method. It was just a question of reminding ourselves what style of ringing session we needed. Next time we can ring in the same style again, and we should have a reasonable chance of completing a plain course after a bit of revision.