I've joined an online band, following a question from David Wilson on the handbell ringers Facebook group. The original query was looking for someone to practise Phobos, but so far we have focused on Bristol Royal, attempting a quarter a couple of weeks ago and then succeeding yesterday. It had been a long time since I had done any online ringing - more than two years - and the memories have come flooding back. Yesterday the internet behaved slightly better than the first attempt, although there were still some sticky patches that took a lot of concentration to get through. Everyone stuck to their work and the method ringing was very good overall. It was a first quarter of Bristol Royal for David Wilson and Tom Farthing, and a first of Bristol Royal in hand for Cara Capewell. The fifth member of the band is Jeff Ladd, so we are a three-countries group (UK, USA and France).

The next method is Vernet-les-Bains Delight Royal (below), named after Jeff's tower. It's Phobos above the treble (well, a royal version of Phobos, so Remus) with a 2nd place lead end. It doesn't have the full Phobos backwork though, because bells below the treble escape from the back four places. As a result, the place bell order is different and less familiar. The pointy frontwork looks a little bit tricky, possibly. We've fixed an attempt in two weeks' time, so let's see how we get on. At the end of yesterday's session someone asked "Will Vernet-les-Bains be more or less difficult than Bristol?" - for me, the answer is "much more difficult" because Bristol has become so familiar.

Vernet-les-Bains Delight Royal
Rhodium Surprise Major

Yesterday we rang a quarter of Rhodium Surprise Major (diagram from CompLib.org, above), and as I wrote last time, I will explain why later. It's one of the methods named after chemical elements (I believe they were mostly composed by Tony Cox), so we've rung two of them now, the...

We had two handbell peal attempts this week, one successful and one to keep on the list of projects. We tried Grandsire Caters on Monday, but failed about two thirds of the way through when I missed a bob. Grandsire Caters has a lot of bobs! Something like 150 calls...