Last Monday we rang a quarter of February's method, Double Dublin. I enjoyed it much more than I expected to - my memory of ringing Double Dublin as part of 23-spliced was that it can be a bit trippy, because of having to remember to do every variation with respect...

We've been doing some practice towards a Spliced Surprise Major project, and at the moment this involves trying to ring a quarter of Preston, Ipswich and Dunster. I agree that this is a strange combination of methods, but all will be revealed eventually. Preston is familiar as one of the...

We've just come back from a short visit to Penrith, where we rang a peal of Cambridge, Yorkshire, Lincolnshire and Rutland with Julia Cater and Nick Tithecott. That makes six peals from six attempts for me, and five out of five for Tina - surely the longest winning streak in...

Yesterday we rang a peal of the Nottingham Eight: London, Bristol, Cambridge, Superlative, Glasgow, Cornwall, Lessness and Cassiobury. I called Graham John's one-part all-the-work composition, and it felt like a real achievement to succeed at the first attempt without it turning into a big project. Most of the ringing...

I've always liked Chesterfield, and I think it's a good candidate for including in the Surprise Major repertoire as an introduction to wrong-place methods. I encountered it as part of Crosland's spliced series. Actually it occurs in two series by Richard Crosland: a series from 4 to 12 methods, which I rang...

Instead of waiting to comment on each instalment of Simon Linford's analysis of Surprise Major methods as candidates for a new standard repertoire, I'm going to get ahead by discussing some candidates of my own - from a handbell perspective, of course.

One way to come up with candidate methods...

First item: we rang a quarter of London yesterday, with Angela on the tenors instead of the trebles. It took us a few attempts to get this one (but I must confess that last week's attempt was going really well until I skipped a lead and systematically put everyone else wrong). Jonathan...

Last Friday, two Ringing Worlds arrived at once, catching up from the snow. So there were two instalments of Simon Linford's selection of methods for a new Surprise Major repertoire.

First was Yorkshire. We have written so much already about Yorkshire on handbells that I don't have anything to add at...

Yesterday we rang my 600th peal - not one of the conventional high-profile landmarks, I know, but according to the PealBase crystal ball I'll be 77 by the time I get to 1000, so in the meantime I'll celebrate whatever I can.

At some point I came up with the...

We rang a peal of London Major on Monday, which was a satisfying achievement. It's not at all easy, and everyone did well. Conducting from a pair other than the tenors was a challenge for me, and afterwards I realised that it completed the Standard 8 as conductor on working...