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 of eBells, and the four creators of eBells met in person for the first time. Tina rang in a demonstration touch of Kent Maximus with Simon Melen ringing four bells, and I handed over our Taylor twelve to Lewis Benfield for a bit of refurbishment. We also enjoyed talking to several visitors about both books. The mugs, however, did not sell well and we still have most of them. If anyone wants a mug, please contact us and we can post them.

So, this week we had a visit from James Perrins, who is normally based in Sydney but is spending several months in the UK this year. He got in touch via Julia to say that he was staying in Edinburgh for a week and was interested in coming over to Glasgow. In the end we put him up for two nights and organised handbells for Monday as well as taking him to the tower practice on Tuesday. We agreed to ring two quarters on handbells, Bristol and Turramurra, both of which we scored with nice ringing (and a bit faster than we usually ring, I thought).

I suggested Turramurra because of the Australian connection (it's the name of a suburb of Sydney), but realised afterwards that it's a bit of a cliche for Brits ringing in Australia. As it turns out though, the method was first rung in Loughborough in the 1960s, at a time when Turramurra was only a six (subsequently augmented to eight).

I've written about Turramurra before. We rang a quarter in 2019, and the blog article discusses peal compositions and a plan to ring a peal - but as far as I can see, we didn't ring a peal, and I don't remember why not. I also don't remember which composition we rang for the quarter - I think Jonathan called it - but this week I called this one:

1312 Turramurra Surprise Major
Composed by Best 1280

M  B  W  H  23456
-----------------
         -  24356
      -  -  35426
   -     -  35264
   3     -  64235
   -     -  64352
-        -  23456
-----------------

The composition gets some nice music out of the method. Turramurra is more or less a better version of Lincolnshire, or perhaps a blend of Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. There's a 5-pull dodge on the front across the half lead, like Lincolnshire, but also a 3-pull dodge in 3-4, arranged in such a way that 4-bell runs at the back occur on the front at the opposite stroke. For example, in the plain course, there are 5678s at backstroke at the back, and 5678s at handstroke on the front.

Now I see that we didn't ring a peal in 2019, we'll have to try to arrange one in the future.