Last weekend was an intensive ringing weekend, although not quite as intensive as originally planned. It all started with an invitation to attempt Cyclic Six Maximus on handbells as part of a weekend of peals celebrating the 25th anniversary of the first performance of David Pipe's classic composition. That was...

Yesterday we rang a quarter of Rhodium Surprise Major (diagram from CompLib.org, above), and as I wrote last time, I will explain why later. It's one of the methods named after chemical elements (I believe they were mostly composed by Tony Cox), so we've rung two of them now, the...

 I'm away on a short business trip this week, but the rest of the band were available on Monday, so I left them an assignment: to name Springboig Surprise Major by ringing a quarter of it, which they duly did. The diagram above is from CompLib.org. I've been wanting for...

Yesterday we rang the quarter of cyclic spliced major that I wrote about a little while ago. It was satisfying after two unsuccessful attempts, and we rang it very well. The composition is a miniature version of David Pipe's popular "cyclic six" maximus. Two of the methods were...

Today we rang a peal at Peter Kirton's house in Perth, which thanks to Simon Aves' research we also know was the first peal in the city (there are no tower bells). It was originally planned to be Grandsire Caters, but Ian Bell had to pull out so we rang...

Last Monday I opened the handbell bag and moths flew out. Honestly, I am not joking! We have a bit of a moth problem at Albany Quadrant, with a few holes in the carpet, but now they have invaded the handbell bag too. I will redouble my efforts to eradicate...

During the pandemic I found myself regularly ringing online with a band containing three Simons: Rudd, Gay and Humphrey. We conceived the idea of ringing with a band consisting entirely of Simons, and worked our way up to a quarter of Little Bob Fourteen. Some time later we thought of...

We rang a peal of cyclic spliced maximus in the tower recently, which is beyond what I can ring on handbells at the moment although while learning the methods I did try ringing two bells on Mabel with varying success. I find that practising on handbells is a good test...

I wrote a little about choice of peal compositions for London, after our peal, but there's more to say. I searched BellBoard for handbell peals of London to see what other conductors have called. The Henry Dains composition, and Middleton's, appear quite a lot, along with two others that...