It all started several years ago, when Jonathan Frye and Angela Deakin asked if we were interested in forming a handbell band, including teaching Angela to ring handbells. We had been trying and failing to do just this for many years (for reasons far too boring to go into), so we said ‘YES’.
(Really, it all started when Mike Clay began some regular handbell practices with some of the students in Edinburgh and various other handbell ringers in the area, including Jonathan. One day our schedules will mesh enough to all ring together – but in handbell ringing, patience is everything.)
Our journey from those first beginnings to where we are now has been both fun and interesting. Also, we learned a lot about teaching handbells to people at various levels of ability. Through it all we have discussed theories of how people learn, best methods of learning (we don’t always agree), and how to transfer some of this expertise into the bell tower.
The blogs below are about that journey, our progress and the progress of other bands by guest authors. They describe the ups and downs as they happen, as honestly as we can.
Normally we organise handbell days twice per year, in May and October, with a combination of quarter peals and practice sessions. We've missed the last three because of the pandemic, but yesterday we restarted with a small-scale event involving 12 people.
The morning focused on getting our three new Glasgow...
Last week we had a live ringing session with Jessica, who we have been teaching in Ringing Room. We spent some time working on handbell ringing style and adapting to the delay between starting the physical movement and the bell sounding. After an evening's practice we were pretty well up...
This week I have been ringing every day since Sunday! Not all handbells, but still, it's been a long time since such an intensive week. Sunday and Tuesday were in the tower, but all the rest were handbells.
On Monday we had a second attempt at the peal of 4-spliced...
We had a good crack at Cambridge Maximus on Monday, but didn't quite get to the end of a quarter. Nevertheless, it was a satisfying evening, as it's a while since we've tried it and usually we have struggled to ring a plain course. We've booked another attempt next Thursday...
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...
Yesterday Nick dropped in for a quarter, as he was passing through Glasgow and had some time between trains. After a bit of debate and method revision, we agreed to ring spliced Cambridge, Yorkshire and Lincolnshire Royal. It was the first time we had tried spliced royal with an Albany...
On Monday we were down to four with the Albany Quadrant band, and the initial idea was to ring a quarter of Superlative at Peter's request. Angela then raised the idea of ringing something for the 73rd anniversary of the NHS. How to get a composition of 1273? It's an...
On Sunday we finally managed to get all seven Simons together for a first attempt at Little Bob 14. After ringing Little Bob 14 and then 16 with the Five O'Clock Club, we decided that it's easier than variations of Kent. It took us a while to settle into it...
On Monday we had an expedition to Angela's house, for the first time in more than a year, and rang a quarter of Bristol Royal. This was very satisfying - although we rang a quarter with Nick a couple of years ago, after several attempts, we had not previously practised...
Yesterday we rang with our 10-bell band, all together in person, and scored a quarter of Littleport. This was very satisfying because I think the only time we've rung a whole course before was in Ringing Room, with some quite difficult internet delays. But yesterday we just sat down...