Following up on Tina's article about losing quarters on the handbell day, I am thinking about the way we use practice sessions, quarter peals, and peals.

We have always rung a lot of quarters with our regular band, as well as on the handbell days. I like measurable achievements, and quarters have benefits that are more difficult to get in shorter touches. For example: ringing in a range of different positions; concentrating for longer periods; practising the determination to continue through mistakes; for the conductor, working with a range of callings and coursing orders.

However, going for quarters prematurely can lead to too many losses, which becomes demoralising; also, even if a quarter is scored, if there is too much intervention from the conductor, it can be unsatisfying for the band.

With our regular band, we have been working our way through the standard methods with Angela inside and Tina and Jonathan conducting. We also have an established pattern of ringing a quarter one week and then practising the next method, but we broke the pattern this time by ringing a quarter of Lincolnshire, practising London, then ringing a quarter of Rutland after a gap of six weeks and with no specific practice.

The Rutland started fairly shakily, but improved as we went on. I did quite a lot of conducting (although Tina was calling) and for me it was worthwhile practice at working with the coursing order and checking or correcting the ringing. However, it seems that I rather took over, and probably the band would have preferred to ring a better quarter another time, even if it meant giving up on this one.

Peals are another question, and here we have different systems with different bands. We worked our way through the right-place standard eight with Mike and Ian, always going for a peal. We had several losses, but all the lost peals were good practice, of course. Getting people to come all the way from Edinburgh for a practice or a quarter seems too much.

This applies even more to getting Julia to come from Penrith. We have had two unsuccessful attempts for a peal of London Royal, and in both cases we rang half way so presumably could have scored a quarter. But going for peals seems worthwhile as a challenging but realistic goal.

Talking of London Royal, we've arranged another attempt for the Saturday after Christmas. More about that later.