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 and PhD) of the School of Computing Science at the University of Glasgow, where I work. It was one of the best lectures of any kind that I can remember attending, and I highly recommend watching it on YouTube if you are at all interested in technology. It's pitched at a non-technical level and is also inspiring in terms of career progression.

An interesting titbit is that Alastair's mother is Julia Donaldson, a familiar name to anyone with children of the right age as she is the author of The Gruffalo and many other best-selling books. So I finally got to meet her, which was nice.

The day after the lecture I meandered my way to Reading, via Twickenham where we didn't manage to ring a quarter of Bristol Major. As described previously, I had invited myself to ring a peal with the Reading band, which was 4-spliced surprise maximus: Bristol, Phobos, Zanussi and Ariel. We rang a good peal and I was satisfied with the way I rang, with just one lead in which I got a bit lost for a while.

It was a significant advance for me, as I've only rung single-method peals of maximus before and not many of those. I have some observations which I think are also relevant to ringing at less lofty levels.

• The band trusted me to ring a peal more advanced than I had done before, even though most of them had never seen me ring anything on 12.
• Being the least experienced member of the band, which is a situation I hardly ever find myself in, was a real treat. All I had to think about was ringing my own bells as well as I could - no question of needing or trying to help anyone else.
• Similarly, not having to conduct meant that I could devote all my attention to the rhythm and methods.
• I knew in advance what the composition was going to be, and I practised parts of it in Handbell Stadium, which gave me confidence.
• I was nervous that everyone else would be ringing perfectly and it would be just me making mistakes. But there were occasional trips from the rest of the band - not many, but even superstar ringers are still human.
• I rang the tenors, which are the easiest pair. Although they spend a lot of time coursing, every method has its own "twiddly bits" which it's desirable to get right. Also, Phobos, Zanussi and Ariel each have a clear separation into frontwork and backwork, with different patterns. On the tenors, most of the time is spent with either both bells in the frontwork or both bells in the backwork. The occasional leads with one bell in each region are noticeably more difficult. I will write an article specifically about this, soon.
• The key to all ringing is absorbing certain patterns so that they can be rung fluently without the need to think through them blow by blow. Examples include plain hunting, treble bob hunting, Kent places, Bristol points, and so on. I have absorbed some of the relevant patterns in the methods from the peal, especially wiggling past the treble in Bristol, but there are others that I still find tricky.
• Whenever we reach one new level, others come into view. I've rung the tenors for spliced surprise maximus, but what about the other fixed pairs? What about the working pairs? What about conducting? Maybe one day...

Now it's back to our local projects, which are progressing well. More later, as usual.