In which learning is not a curve
It’s a zigzag, a squiggle, a wriggle, a looping of the loop (and a biting of one’s own tail).
Last Wednesday—last Wednesday week, not two days ago—I told you I managed to call a really vicious ratbag of a pattern of call changes, thank you Wild Robert, thank you very much—I mean I succeeded in calling it. And at Sunday service I got through (and on no sleep) a touch of Grandsire triples ringing inside which was a bit like winning the Grand Prix formula one in my 14-year-old VW Golf.
Monday I made a mess of calling a much simpler course of call changes at Old Eden, as well as just generally ringing like a neurologically damaged axolotl.* This Wednesday at Ditherington we had a somewhat challenging band in that there were only five of us and only Wild Robert knew what he was doing. But he rises to occasions like this and at the end of an evening of call changes and plain courses in which I got to pretend to be a jaded old veteran who had seen it all, Wild Robert turned on me with a gleam in his eye and said, and now, Robin, you can call a touch of Grandsire doubles. —MEEP. You’re joking . . . you’re not joking.
And guess what? I did it**. I withdrew from my wounded axolotl aspect and reinhabited my half knows what she’s doing some of the time aspect. This is not a reliable transformation. It was especially impressive in this case because we had beginners on both the treble and the tenor who tended to wander rather. Even Wild Robert—who had been busy with the treble and the tenor and ringing two bells himself and therefore perforce left me to my own devices—was surprised.*** Have you done this before? he said to me. No.
I then made the ghastly mistake of mentioning my triumph to Niall and Colin last night during handbells—this partly because I had confessed to Colin a few weeks ago that this Deputy Ringing Master thing was unhinging my sense of self-preservation and that I had decided that I had to learn to call something, and he’d said in his jolly chirp-chirp manner, which is a great deal more appealing than Niall’s evil mwa ha ha ha ha manner, that there were a couple of dead easy touches that I could absolutely learn. Unfortunately Niall was there too, when I was telling Colin, and Niall said, predictably, mwa ha ha ha ha, you can call Grandsire tomorrow at New Arcadia practise.
And I did. I braced myself when I saw Niall coming and I did it. I called my little touch again.† Which begins to suggest that it—this tiny simple-minded touch—will become something I can, in fact, do.†† Notch on the butt of my gold-handled cane. If I had a gold-handled cane. I would, however, like to get to the point of not trembling so hard I can barely tie my rope up at the end, after I’ve said ‘stand’ and the bells fall silent.
Of course—back to the learning zigzag again—I then made an unlovely glurdge of ringing Grandsire triples inside . . . sigh . . . but I had help. Someone who shouldn’t be making glurdges made a glurdge, and I’m still only barely holding my line when everyone else is perfect. The joke came when I went humbly round to Edward, who had been calling it, while Niall was torturing one of our beginners, and asked if Edward would tell me what he’d been calling so I could at least figure out what I should have been doing.
I then made the really awful mistake of asking Edward how he kept track of a long touch and he started telling me. Numbers! Aaaaaugh! Numbers! The problem with these bell ringer chappies is that they loove their bell ringing so much that they can’t stop, even when their audience clearly wants to run away and hide . . . why are you looking at me like that?
* * *
* With a little help from the bells. I tell myself this is good both for my handling—a Truly Useful Ringer Can Ring Any Bell Accurately—and for my character. It’s good to fail. It keeps you humble. It also keeps you awake at night obsessively replaying being a dork in your mind’s eye.
** I’ve been trying to decide if I want to risk your sanity, not to mention your patience, by trying to explain what calling a touch means. Um. You’ve got it that method ringing involves patterns, right? You start out ringing rounds, which is the bells in order from lightest (treble) to heaviest (tenor), 1 2 3 4 5 6 (or however many: if you’re ringing doubles, you’re ringing a pattern involving five bells with the tenor always ringing last: every bell must ring once before any bell can ring again). Then the conductor yells Go [name of method]!, and the next ‘row’ of six bells will have begun swapping places, so—for the beginning of Grandsire for example—the three stays in third place for one more ‘blow’ before moving toward the front, seconds place, then lead, while the treble moves from second place to third place and the second bell spends two blows in lead before following the treble toward the back. These patterns are set. You learn them as such. Grandsire ALWAYS begins as I’ve just described, and each bell proceeds in a prescribed order through the series of swaps and zigzags (speaking of zigzags) which is that method’s individual hallmark. And yes, if you are not good at patterns or at Things That Involve Numbers, learning your first change-ringing patterns will crush your brain like a bug.
But this was not enough for those pesky method creators (who clearly were good at patterns and Things That Involve Numbers). They invented a further-mixing-up-the-bells system which is called a touch. A plain course is just the basic pattern where all the bells run through all the pieces of ‘work’ till they each get back to the point in the pattern where each individually started. A touch is when the conductor shouts Bob!, or Single!, before they get there, the purpose of which is to mix the bells up further and prevent them from coming back into ‘rounds’ as soon as they would in a plain course. Depending on where you are in the pattern, and whether a bob or a single is called, what you do next varies: but in the course of learning to ring a method, you have to learn this too, so you can ring a touch of the thing, whatever it is. Only sissies stop at plain courses.
However only total frelling madpersons ever take it a step further to conducting. The sad sweating conductor has to know when and what to call and where that then leaves everybody because said sad sweating conductor has to get them out of wherever that is again so that the band eventually do come back into rounds and can stop. Or be ringing forever like a kind of campanological Flying Dutchman^. . . .
I never wanted to be a conductor. I have had no aspirations whatsoever to being a conductor. And then they made me frelling Deputy Ringing Master. And suddenly . . . cheez. I’m scary when I’m aroused. Lock up your sharp objects.
^ This is actually mathematical nonsense. There’s a limited number of mixes you can make out of only five items, in this case bells. But there are a lot of other rules involved in change ringing. Which you will be delighted to hear I am not going to get into. Not tonight anyway.
*** I probably shouldn’t try to explain why I could do it, should I? It’s okay, if you have a headache you can skip this bit.
I’ve told you that in a plain course all the inside bells do all the bits of ‘work’ that comprise the pattern, following each other in what’s known as coursing order. As soon as you start throwing calls into the muddle, all kinds of untoward things can happen, including that one bell or another can get stuck doing the same piece of work over and over. The particular touch Wild Robert taught me involves the bell you-the-conductor is on cycling through only two pieces of work . . . and every time you get to the second one again you call. Then you just have to remember (a) whether you’re calling a bob or a single (b) what you called last time which helps with (a) and (c) how many times you’ve called either of the above so you know when you’re about to get back to rounds and can escape.
The reason I could do it is because the pattern is: single bob bob, single bob bob, and you don’t really need to use numbers. You can get away with: one thing. The other thing. The other thing again which means the first thing next time. Then the other thing and the other thing again and then it’s over. See? No numbers. I’ve broken down a lot of my (ahem) method ringing into these sub-number bits which is a lot of how I’ve contrived to learn change ringing at all. And yes, you could call it binary if you were feeling deeply unkind, but I wish you wouldn’t.
† But see previous footnote. I can do it for very specific reasons of not having to count anything. This does not pertain to conducting generally.
†† Vicky, who doesn’t go for the mwa ha ha ha ha thing much, said crisply, well done. And, somewhat dryly, added: We need more people who can call in this band. —Vicky doesn’t do disingenuous either, or I might accuse her of it. You can pretty much assume that barring St Paul’s and York Minster, all change ringing bands need more people who can call. Change ringing itself is awful enough. Conducting change ringing means you’re probably a danger to society. I’m sure MI5 keeps files on it.
comments
Please join the discussion at Robin McKinley's Web Forum.