I sometimes enjoy a cryptic crossword, but yesterday we were filling in the gaps in the grid of Remus. This has been our surprise royal project for a while, with the usual interruptions and diversions. Yesterday's session was quite satisfying, considering that we have had a break of several weeks...

Yesterday we rang a peal of Bristol Royal, which was a good achievement by all the band. I thought the method-ringing was noticeably better than in our two previous peals of Bristol Royal, with fewer trips overall, fewer big mistakes, and much less need for conducting.

However, there was a...

We've had a few sessions of practising Remus, making some progress, but yesterday we tried a different approach. It was partly inspired by one of Mary Jones's blogs. What had been happening was that we were ringing in "quarter peal mode" even though we were still at the stage...

Last weekend I rang a tower bell peal at Guildford, which had originally been planned for June 2020, cancelled because of covid, eventually rearranged for April this year, cancelled again because more and more of the band were catching covid, and now finally scored. I arranged to stay for the...

This week we finally managed to get a ten-bell band together, and we succeeded with a quarter of Fermanagh. Like many of the methods I've been advocating as a modern surprise royal repertoire, it has a clear separation between frontwork and backwork. There are also many minor and major...

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...

For once, everything proceeded exactly according to plan!

We started by slotting in an extra quarter on Friday evening. When I discovered that Matt would be arriving relatively early, I thought I'd better organise something to occupy us for the evening, so we rang Bob Major for Zoé's first handbell...

Yesterday was the Oxford DG handbell day in Reading, which logged an impressive 31 quarters in BellBoard involving 35 people. The next Scottish handbell day will be on 7th May, and we have 21 people signed up. Slightly smaller than the ODG day, but when you consider that the Scottish...

A few weeks ago we temporarily suspended the Glasgow tower-bell practice and had a Ringing Room session. Peter and I found ourselves ringing two bells each for a course of London Minor, which was a first for Peter. Thus inspired, the next time Angela wasn't available for handbell ringing we...