Frelling OBE
Vicky, our tower secretary, is one of the organising forces of the known universe. There’s the Electromagnetic force, the Strong nuclear force, the Weak nuclear force, the Gravitational force, and Vicky. She organises bands for weddings, funerals, special services, quarter peals and striking competitions, she looks after visiting bands . . . she’s been known to pressgang visiting ringers in the street when we’re short handed, even if said ringers were trying to have a bell-free holiday: and leave it to Vicky to know them and know they’re ringers . . . she chivvies our band to go to ‘education days’ and is usually one of the steady ringers who supports the learners. She writes the tower news and announcements that go in the parish magazine, and she’s usually the one who sends in successful quarter peal reports for publication in THE RINGING WORLD.
And with reference to the facts that she organizes our quarters and knows everyone who rings, has ever rung, has ever thought for two minutes on a Sunday morning when an uncharacteristically well struck touch of something or other is wafting out over their heads that they would like to learn to ring, she is also always looking for reasons for quarter peals. The birth of ringers’ children and grandchildren*, important birthdays and wedding anniversaries, successful circumnavigations of the globe in cowhide coracles, etc, anything worth celebrating happening in any ringer’s extended family, Vicky will ferret it out and we will ring a quarter for it.**
I imagine she does this out of a combination of a naturally socially-involved attitude*** and to keep herself from going mad. She says herself that organizing ringers is another of these cat-herding occupations and both from listening in on Vicky tackling people at practise nights and Sunday mornings to sign up for one or another of the occasions up on the board needing ringers, and my very minor brushes with ringer-gathering†, usually when Vicky is in Kenya or Suriname ††, I will support this view fervently. Feeling that there’s a reason for all this effort††† makes it easier to keep picking up that telephone.
My tower rings quarters every other Sunday, more or less. A few of these are ‘practise’ quarters, for those of us who have learnt something well enough we ought to be able to ring a quarter of it, but nobody’s party is spoilt if we fire out. But most of them are for some occasion or other. If there aren’t enough obvious events in Vicky’s ken, she goes looking.
A few weeks ago she decided that we should ring a quarter peal for Peter’s OBE. And of course his wife should ring in it.
Aaaaaaaaaugh.
I haven’t rung a quarter in over a year, I think, barring the accidental handbell one this spring. Because of the ME. As I keep saying, I have mild ME as it goes. And I can fake most things. I can ring at practises and ordinary services because you rarely ring more than a few minutes at a time—a ten-minute touch is about as long as it gets—twenty minutes if it’s a good band and we’re feeling frisky‡. Even on Sunday mornings when there are only four or five or six of us so we all have to ring all the time we still come to the end of a touch, stand our bells, and stop for a minute or two. If I have to slow down on hellhound hurtles, there’s no one to see but the hellhounds, and they’re used to it. My rose bushes don’t care if I sit down for a while. Writing and composing always have long periods of staring into space doing nothing‡‡ and my piano-playing always sounds like I have fourteen and a half arthritic fingers and a bad attitude.
But I can’t fake a quarter.‡‡‡ A quarter peal is forty-five minutes standing up pulling on a bell rope and concentrating. The ME means I have no stamina, mental or physical. Sure, on good days I could do it§ but I don’t know when I’m going to have a good day, or a bad day, or when a good day might suddenly, between one paragraph of PEGASUS and the next, turn into a bad one, because sometimes it really is that sudden. And organising ringers is already like herding cats: I’m not going to put myself or Vicky in the position of phoning her up half an hour before a quarter and saying I can’t do it.
Vicky said, of course you want to ring in Peter’s quarter.
Um.
Vicky said, I’ll find an eighth person who is willing to stand in at the last minute if you decide you can’t do it.
And she did. What’s more, all the ringers are people I know and like and ring with§§—it was conducted by the ringing master at my old tower who first started teaching me to ring a decade ago—and, knowing Vicky, she’ll have done that deliberately.
Well, I wouldn’t be writing about this at such length if we hadn’t got the quarter.
We got the quarter. Yaaaay.
I admit my anxiety level has been rising somewhat sharply over the last day or two§§§—and high anxiety levels are very bad for ME. I get up every morning sort of testing myself for squashy places—today I got up expecting my head to fall off and roll under the bed.¤ But it didn’t. I got through morning service ring. I got through hellhound hurtle. I got through pretending to work on PEGASUS.
I got through the quarter.
. . . The curious thing is . . . it was kind of fun. The fact that it was all an extremely good band except for me helped a lot, an extremely good band ringing a method they could do in their sleep.¤¤ And also . . . I’ve gone on in here before about how time on a rope is time on a rope is time on a rope and even when you’re not getting anywhere, if you’re a mediocre ringer who only learns by grind, you are getting somewhere: you’re racking up more hours. I still had to be hauled out of the wrong gaps a few times today but there were great stretches of it when I could just ring. When eight bells wasn’t too many ¤¤¤ and I could see exactly where I should be every stroke. I was thinking—wistfully—that at this rate, if just ringing gets familiar enough, I might even risk ringing . . . another quarter . . . some time. . . .
Peter was primed to be in the churchyard when we should be finishing, and to come up the tower ladder as soon as he heard us stand our bells. And present Vicky with the posy I had fought into shape and strapped together with a ribbon this afternoon for the purpose—although it was his idea. I had wailed, we’re ringing a quarter for your frelling OBE! And it was Vicky’s idea! And he said, that’s really sweet. Shall I bring her some flowers?
Peter is a nice man. I’m glad we rang him a quarter. I’m glad Vicky made me ring in it.
* * *
* Anybody under the age of 50 who lives within reasonable commuting distance of a change-ringing bell tower is hereby ORDERED to go learn to ring.^ Our average age is getting older and older and the usual elder-generation thing of worrying about what one’s own little piece of the world is coming to has some validity for bell ringers.
^ And you have to like it. And start bringing your friends.
** If we’re very lucky someone will commission us. The problem there is that you feel a fool if you lose the quarter. I have never rung in commissioned quarters for the obvious reasons of nervousness and mediocrity.
*** which I can’t imagine
† Ringers like Niall and Colin are worth their weight in gold.^ They just say ‘yes’ or ‘no’—usually ‘yes’. Way too many ringers say I think so and don’t get back to you. Or you ring them up and they continue to say I think so. Or they say, I’ll check my diary. And then they don’t get back to you. About the third time you’ve phoned one of these doofuses they start getting testy.
^ No, Niall is a scrawny little beggar, he’s worth more than his weight in gold.
†† She has some very well-located relatives
††† Howard Ogs’ retirement from fifty happy years of Bolster Evaluation at the Serendipity Soft Furnishings Factory, say.
‡ No, if the conductor is feeling frisky. A glint in Edward’s eye on a Sunday morning puts fear into the rest of us.
‡‡ But trying to look like you’re hard at work mentally pursuing the ultimate secret of life and art, in case the muse is watching.
‡‡‡ As I can’t fake riding. I’m only interested in riding if I can develop a relationship with an individual horse, and horses are live, and need regular work and consistent handling. I can’t do regular and consistent anything, and to the extent I can, it’s spent on hellhounds.
I’ve decided that the real purpose of the blog isn’t to keep my publisher happy, but to make me feel, on bad ME days, that I’ve got something done.
§ As on good days I could ride, which is kind of a killer.
§§ I only told Peter yesterday that I was ringing a quarter. And why.
§§§ Including Niall and Colin
¤ Not under the bed. It’s full of boxes of books.
¤¤ Plain bob triples. And I was only on the treble, which is the easy bell.
¤¤¤ In triples you only have to keep track of six. The eighth is the tenor-behind, who is always last, and you’re the seventh.
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