The Five o'Clock Handbell Club has gone into Christmas mode, with a range of seasonally-named methods on the menu for the next two weeks. I didn't sign up for any initially, but there are two attempts arranged for New Year's Eve Little Surprise Major on, you guessed it, 31st December...
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...
I have written before about how following the coursing order can help with remembering a composition, and here is another example.
On Monday we are going for a quarter of Bristol with Alex Frye (it's going to be on Ringing Room because we currently have a local lockdown in...
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...
Three online quarter peal attempts again this week, but only two scored. On Wednesday we tried Yorkshire Royal in Ringing Room, but there were a lot of delays and it didn't go. Thursday was London Major, again in Ringing Room, which we rang very well. Actually that was my...
We did well with our quarter of CYNR this week, so I would like to go for a peal of it during the handbell weekend that I'm planning in April. Here's a survey of compositions to choose from. First, some essential criteria. I'm looking at tenors-together all-the-work compositions. It's possible to...
The next method of the month is Ytterbium. Let's have a look at it now, although I don't think we'll be able to ring it until a bit later in August.
It's a D lead end, i.e. "alternate Cambridge" place bell order. We've had this place bell order a few...
This month's method is Kenninghall, and we rang a quarter of it on Monday - once again, the first band to put a performance of the monthly method into the list on BellBoard. It was a new venue, but it's only temporary - there's some building work going on at...
After our peals of Lessness and Cornwall, the next thing we're going to try with Julia and Nick is Turramurra. It isn't a Pickled Egg method, although I think it featured in the initial discussions about which methods to include; maybe it was even in the "also try" list...
On Monday we had another go at Cornwall with Julia and Nick, and succeeded with a good peal. I decided that ringing the tenors would give us a better chance, so we changed the band around a little. I found that it still takes some concentration to keep the treble bob...