Last night I manged to have dinner before the handbell ringers turned up - which was a bit stunning.  Thursdays are one of those days where I am always on the way to somewhere else, coordinating several schedules, and let's not mention the 'your homework is due tomorrow' threats to the children.

Thursdays now start and end with handbell ringing - first is the handbell club at the school.  This week I introduced some improvements to my plain hunting on bodies game, using little signs with numbers and getting the children sitting out to write down each order.  It needs a little more work (for instance, I think that little numbered headbands would work better than signs to hold up), but after a few goes the children got into the pattern and were writing it out for themselves several times.  It is very cool to see that happening, even with the one who moaned that she 'would never get it'.

'You so totally are going to get this', I said.  She's on her way certainly and left happier than when she started.

After that the rest of life rumbles on in its tedious way until our evening handbells. The rest of our regular handbell band is just as busy, but if we let being busy with other things come in the way of handbells, then we would never get anywhere.  Fortunately, we can all sympathise, pour out the wine and get ringing (not necessarily in that order).  Tonight was another combined band ten-bell meeting, and we did much of the same as we did a fortnight ago:  some treble bob hunting, some Bastow Royal.  We moved the band around a bit, went back to our original formation, and started discussing how to move into quarter peal territory.

This led us to some Little Bob Royal, which took a few goes, a good-ish glug of wine and a double helping of crisps to complete a clean plain course.  Then Seph mentioned that she had had a look at Cambridge Major so we had a go at that, and got half way through the course before breaking down.  Not at all bad for her first try at it.