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.
Well, not new, but newly refurbished. When we went to Nottingham for the Ringing Roadshow in September, we handed over our Taylor 12 to Lewis Benfield for an overhaul. After doing the work he dropped them off at my dad's house because he was there for some ringing, and yesterday...
Last week I had a trip to London, as I had been invited to attend Alastair Donaldson's inaugural lecture as Professor of Computing at Imperial College. (I have seen the name Alastair Donaldson on BellBoard, but this is a different one!) The connection is that Alastair is a graduate (BSc...
Back in the days of ringing with Roger Bailey at Imperial College in the early 1990s, it frequently happened that handbell ringers visiting London would contact Roger and ask whether he could organise a peal for them. He was always happy to oblige. I have had it in mind for...
Last week we rang a quarter of Plain Bob Major with Colin, which we had not quite managed to complete on handbell day. It went smoothly. For a change, I called this composition, which is a nice one-liner.
1280 Plain Bob Major W B H 23456 -------------- - 2 2...
Handbell day went well, with a few quarter peal successes and a range of useful practice sessions. Everyone seemed to enjoy it. We had mixed results with the Top and Up. Jonathan's group managed to ring the whole touch of spliced maximus, while the other groups got as far as...
It's been a while, but now I can get back to writing about ringing, instead of writing about writing about ringing. First, though, let me report that we went to the Ringing Roadshow and sold nearly all of the books that we took. There were also quite a few sales...
Tina, Angela, Barbara and Susannah have been working on this project for a little while, and yesterday they succeeded with a peal of Yorkshire which was also Tina's first handbell peal as conductor and Angela's first of surprise on an inside pair.
Scottish Association
Edinburgh
27 House o'Hill Crescent
Saturday...
We've done a lot of ringing in the last two weeks, a lot of it on handbells, and I've rung with an unusually large number of people. I had a visit to the Edinburgh handbell band, which included losing a quarter of Bristol and practising some other surprise major methods...
The biggest Stedman news this week is Henry Pipe calling the Impossible One-Part on handbells. It's a peal composition by Alan Burbidge, carefully designed to be as difficult as possible. There are equal numbers of plains, bobs and singles, and no repeated sequences of more than a few sixes...
For once, everything proceeded exactly according to plan!
We started by slotting in an extra quarter on Friday evening. When I discovered that Matt would be arriving relatively early, I thought I'd better organise something to occupy us for the evening, so we rang Bob Major for Zoé's first handbell...