We like the idea of trying to ring Norman Smith's 23-spliced Surprise Major. First rung in 1966, the composition has become a popular challenge. Andrew Craddock's PealBase web site includes statistics on peals of 23-spliced. At the time of writing (26th September 2014) it has been rung 639 times, but only 30 times...
Today we rang a peal at Peter Kirton's house in Perth, which thanks to Simon Aves' research we also know was the first peal in the city (there are no tower bells). It was originally planned to be Grandsire Caters, but Ian Bell had to pull out so we rang...
Last Monday I opened the handbell bag and moths flew out. Honestly, I am not joking! We have a bit of a moth problem at Albany Quadrant, with a few holes in the carpet, but now they have invaded the handbell bag too. I will redouble my efforts to eradicate...
During the pandemic I found myself regularly ringing online with a band containing three Simons: Rudd, Gay and Humphrey. We conceived the idea of ringing with a band consisting entirely of Simons, and worked our way up to a quarter of Little Bob Fourteen. Some time later we thought of...
We rang a peal of cyclic spliced maximus in the tower recently, which is beyond what I can ring on handbells at the moment although while learning the methods I did try ringing two bells on Mabel with varying success. I find that practising on handbells is a good test...
I wrote a little about choice of peal compositions for London, after our peal, but there's more to say. I searched BellBoard for handbell peals of London to see what other conductors have called. The Henry Dains composition, and Middleton's, appear quite a lot, along with two others that...
Back in 2015/16 we rang a series of peals with Mike and Ian, working our way through the right-place methods from the standard 8 surprise major; a couple of years later we rang a peal of Bristol with Mike. As part of this year's campaign to get more people to...
This visit took place in Staffordshire while celebrating the 80th birthday of my dad, Phil Gay, but they do say that the best parts of Derbyshire are in Staffordshire.
The original plan didn't involve handbells at all. I was invited to ring a tower bell peal on dad's bells, which...
Peter King's composition of 23-spliced treble bob major was recently rung on handbells for the first time, having been rung only twice (I think) on tower bells. The band was Jonathan Agg, Lucy Warren, Julian Howes and Alan Reading. Posting in the Bellringers Facebook group, Philip Earis wrote:
The...
Yesterday we rang a good peal of Bristol with Estella Haynes and Jack Page. I had been planning to get Estella to come over from Edinburgh for a peal, and then it turned out that yesterday she was working in Glasgow for the day and also Jack is visiting for...