We're spending Christmas and New Year in the Washington DC area, visiting Tina's family. Thanks to Tina's presidential blog, our presence was detected by Bryn and Leland Reimer and Myles Dakan, who are all coincidentally spending New Year nearby. They are based in Northampton, Massachusetts, so this was another...

Earlier this year, Simon Aves alerted me to the fact that the number of handbell peals rung in Scotland was approaching 200. We have a complete record of handbell peals by the Scottish Association, but finding all the peals rung for other associations takes a lot of work - which...

On Sunday we had a surprise minor session with Alison, who came over from Edinburgh. She had previously rung a quarter of Cambridge on the trebles, and wanted to practise the other pairs. After ringing courses on 5-6 and then 3-4, we kept her on 3-4 and worked our way...

We did it! We rang a handbell peal on the exact 90th anniversary of the first Scottish Association handbell peal, at the same address: 66 Hillhead Street. In 1932 it was the home of Stephen H Wood, a member of the Glasgow band who conducted the peal. These days it's...

The next handbell peal at Albany Quadrant is likely to be the day after our handbell day at the beginning of May. It's a little unclear whether we will have five people or six. If five, I would like to go for Bristol Royal again as it will be a...

We had a good crack at Cambridge Maximus on Monday, but didn't quite get to the end of a quarter. Nevertheless, it was a satisfying evening, as it's a while since we've tried it and usually we have struggled to ring a plain course. We've booked another attempt next Thursday...

Two weeks ago I rang a quarter of Bristol in which the pairs were assigned randomly just before we started. We had agreed in advance that whoever got the tenors would conduct - which ended up being me. Yesterday we took the concept a step further by randomly assigning individual...

For quarters of Cambridge Minor I usually call three wrongs, three homes for the short block, giving 600 and a quarter peal length of 1320. Many people prefer to call something slightly shorter, and one well-known calling for a 576 is to call the tenor 4ths, wrong, home, 4ths, wrong, three...

I've just rung another quarter in Ringing Room: Cambridge Major, on handbells of course. I tried out a pair of Ben Johnson handbells that I put together at the weekend. They performed well and they're a comfortable weight. Ben's look more like real bells, with a metallic bronze for the...

Yesterday we managed to get all five of us together for the first time, and we rang a nice quarter of Cambridge Royal. Tina called it, which was a first for her, and it was Peter's first of surprise royal. The composition was one we have often used: sM...