Another Tale of Bells
Bells are either keeping me sane, or helping me over the edge. Or both. Ding dong.
We had a wedding yesterday. Sunday weddings are no one’s favourite—well, the St Paul’s or York Minster band may love weddings, because they just dust off their Superlative Surprise Number Two Maximus* and ring a quarter peal. Down here among the grubs, if we’re going to ring all eight**, we’re probably ringing call changes. On a very good day we might have a Grandsire Triples band*** . . . but Vicky has probably been calling all over the county to get eight pairs of hands on ropes at all, and the slightly depressing truth is that a lot of the ordinary, non-change-ringing schmoos of the world prefer listening to call changes because it’s easier to follow than a proper method. They’re schmoos, however. Well struck method ringing is thrilling.
If I were a baby ringer growing up in Devon, I assume I’d be passionately defending call changes, which Devon ringers have turned into a significant art form, but I’m not. I’m growing up in Hampshire. And I’d rather ring methods. But for a wedding you have to ring what you can make sound good. And a wedding on Sunday . . . we’ve already rung service, and even bell junkies may want to do something else occasionally†.
And yesterday’s wedding was further complicated by the fact that bells were wanted to ring them in as well as out. Usually it’s just out. But the groom is someone who puts a lot of time into the church, and if he wanted to be rung in for his wedding, he should be. Even Vicky quailed at the prospect of finding a band that would put up with this however—and in the end she didn’t. We cancelled morning service ring, and those of us who lived nearest would ring in, and then we’d have a full eight to ring out.
The ringing in went okay, barring the fact that our ringing-chamber window on proceedings is for the inside of the church, where we can see them marching down the aisle toward the door and know when to pull off for ringing after the ceremony.†† And once you’re off, you can keep ringing till you stop: there aren’t any more adjustments that need to be made. For ringing someone in, you’re sort of the background music like the piano at a piano bar till the crucial couple have finally appeared, and then you stop. But you can’t hear little things like the organ striking up ‘Here comes the bride’ when your ears are full of bells. So we had to keep sending someone downstairs to look round for an approaching bride.
I’ve told you how weddings always run late, right?††† And this service was going to be a long one because the groom—the tiresome groom who wanted bells at both ends—is musical so there were additional euphonious interludes etc. So we’d be back at the tower in forty-five minutes. I went off to the florist’s for my regular Sunday morning cruise—she’s always got good end-of-the-week cut rate stuff on Sunday mornings, much of which you just trim back and cut down and hey presto—and moseyed back to the cottage for a leisurely cup of tea. I’d just settled down on my stool‡ to peruse the latest issue of Time/The Week/The Ringing World/The London Review of Books/And That’s Only a Few of the Weeklies I Could Go On But I’d Better Stop Here. . . .
And heard the bells pull off.
You know those jokes about spewing your mouthful of tea all over the landscape? Not funny. Not funny at all. Got my shoes on and bolted out the door like a hellhound after a rabbit and down the pavement at a dangerous speed‡‡—mothers with small children ran crying into the street to get out of the two-legged juggernaut’s way—counting as I ran: five bells. There were several of us still en route. Flew up the ladder like a fired arrow‡‡‡, thinking that my singing lessons are obviously doing great things for my lung capacity.
They were ringing the back five, which sound more impressive. I slid between ringer and ringer (while they’re both more or less on backstroke, because that’s when the ropes are overhead and not flopping around where you could get caught in a loop) and pulled off the three. Six bells.
A minute or two later, someone else came pelting up the ladder. Seven bells.
And another minute or two after that, the last, panting, red-faced pair of hands dove through and pulled off the treble.
Eight bells.
This is why we’re always, always always early . . . and then why we always, always always sit around grumbling to ourselves, because weddings always run late.§
* * *
* I am not making this up
** Maximus, just by the way, means twelve bells. Both St Paul’s and York Minster have twelve bells: there aren’t a lot of twelve bell towers.^ Eight bells all ringing in the pattern is major. Triples is seven bells ringing the pattern and the eighth always ringing last (tenor-behind). I have no idea what eleven bells and tenor-behind is called. Eleven ringers donging and a partridge in a pear tree, possibly.
^ I will get back to New York City one of these days not because of my publisher or my career or my agent or my best friend+ . . . but because of the twelve bells at Trinity.
+ Oh, well, also my best friend
*** Our chance of ringing Grandsire Triples for weddings would go up significantly if I could ring it—ie ‘inside’. At present I can only ring the simple-minded treble, and the ringing world is rotten with treble-only ringers. Arrrgh. This is why I’m so besotted on learning it: my new party trick, Kent, is a luxury. In my tower—and I would have said most eight-bell English towers with reasonably good bands, although I could be wrong—to live a happy, fulfilled existence as a ringer, you have to be able to ring Grandsire and Stedman Triples. But you can ring Kent on six, which means you only need four good ringers and a steady treble to teach a beginner. Triples require that fifth good ringer, and a lot of practise nights never get near that. Repeated arrrgh.
† Hurtle hellhounds, compose music, plant roses . . . finish writing frelling novels . . .
†† I know I’ve told you this, but this is a dead reliable buzz for me: they’re coming down the aisle, it’s time, ‘look to, treble’s going, she’s gone’: bongbongbongbongbongbongbongbong. I don’t suppose you have to be a romantic to be a bell ringer, but it sure helps if you ring a lot of frelling late weddings.
††† Always. Always. A-L-W-A-Y-S.
‡ Absent-mindedly fending off Chaos, who shoots out of the dog crate the moment he hears the stool being set next to the counter, and starts bringing me toys.
‡‡ Especially at my age and on these knees
‡‡‡ Or like Mary Martin in Peter Pan although I don’t recall there being any ladders.
§ Our monthly Old Eden practise tonight—by tonight yesterday’s wedding was funny. Vicky had had a bad weekend: at the very end they’d lost the quarter they’d rung Saturday, and when she’d turned up to be an extra pair of hands for service ring at Sox Episcopi, the church was locked and no one had the key. She should have known something would go wrong with our wedding.
We had a good turn out—thanks to yours truly on the telephone this weekend: YO. MONTHLY PRACTISE AT OLD EDEN MONDAY. BE THERE OR I’LL COME AFTER YOU—including three beginners and a treble-only ringer. I’m pretty used to being one of the (comparatively) big kids at Wild Robert’s Wednesday practises but I’m still kind of stuck in the mindset with Vicky and the New Arcadia ringers that I’m the shallow, meagre end. But I rang pretty steadily all night . . . because I’m a perfectly adequate filler-in for real beginners. And because I’m not used to being one of the big kids on New Arcadia turf I was remembering vividly being a beginner and longing not to be. And here I am. Yaay. Bumbling, erratic, and unreliable . . . but not a beginner.
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