Handbells and hopelessness: guest post by Alicia
One of the important things to remember when attempting to ring handbells in company with the Hellgoddess and her Thursday evening group of fellow ringing maniacs is that IT’S ONLY TWO HOURS, MAX.* Anyone with a reasonable sense of self-preservation can survive that, right?
It’s strange, really. There’re these nice, normal-looking, friendly people, who will sit and drink tea, eat chocolate biscuits even, at the halfway point in the handbell session. Robin, Niall, Colin, Gemma. They talk to you, they smile, they presumably breathe and think, walk and laugh in the same way as the rest of us humans. But put handbells within their grasp and some little synapse in their brains goes ‘Click’ and switches the neural energy down a new path. Then they turn into lifeforms that have a whole other take on what being sentient means.** Catch them on an evening when the ringing isn’t going as smoothly as it normally does for them and – Oy!
The last time I joined the group, about 10 days ago, it turned out to be one of those evenings. Sitting hunched in a chair I’d wrongly thought would take me out of everyone’s line of sight, there in Robin’s sitting-room*, I had the two smallest bells in the set thrust into my trembling hands by Niall. “You know what to do, don’t you”, he said. “You just hunt up to the back and down again.” Oh sure. “We’ll be on the working bells.” Uh huh. Robin was saying nothing at this point. Perched, cross-legged, on her sofa cushion, she was obviously in a state of intense mental preparation for the trial ahead. I would no more have interrupted her at that point than I would have attempted to remove its first meal for a week from the paws of a (normally) friendly tiger.*** And then we were off, all six bells (in this method) ringing, one after the other, in the space of about 1.5 seconds per round. Or rather, that would have been 1.5 seconds if yours truly could ring at the correct interval. #timingfail. #Ididtrytowarnyou. Try again from the beginning…and again…and again…and…well, you get the picture. What’s really unnerving is that no-one breaks down and screams. There’s no throwing of objects, no drumming of heels on the carpet or shredding of the cushions by teeth, no whooping for joy when something works out. It’s all very British and restrained† – it’s just that there’s this immense mental pressure to Get It Right. Every Time.
After 10 minutes of this, the hands of the less-skillful tend to be shaking rather badly. There’s very little computational space left in the brain, either. That’s the point, I’ve found, where phrases such as ‘Wouldn’t you all rather ring something more interesting and I’ll just sit out and listen’, or ‘May I visit your bathroom, Robin?’** come in useful. On this occasion, one or more of these plaintive and despairing cries was accepted and the real addicts all (metaphorically) hitched themselves forward and really concentrated on the next method. Gemma and Colin came in on this one so there were eight hands/bells ringing something that sounded so complicated it would have been no surprise if any bats still within hearing range had their echolocation abilities warped to the extent that they were forced into time-shifting and were eating their insects before they’d actually caught them.†† And even then these addicts were not satisfied. “We’ll try a Touch of that, shall we, now that everyone’s settled down?” said Niall. This means that on top of ringing a series of patterns that would tax the ability of Einstein to visualise, the person conducting calls for a ‘Bob’ or ‘Single’ at various points. This introduces the fifth and seventh dimensions of time/space to the method and makes the average mortal’s eyes cross, inextricably. And it wasn’t all plain sailing, even for this group. There were several occasions where one could see a slight tightening of fingers around bell handles, where that heavy quivering stillness one gets just before a thunderstorm breaks was hovering almost visibly over each ringer’s head, and where the chocolate biscuit crumbs left on the plate in the middle of the group started forming into fractal patterns. †††
Still, all things end, eventually. With the heavy sighs of those who won’t be meeting to ring again until the next week, the group members switched to light conversation (centred around ringing, towers, and ringers, naturally). Niall then had to leap off home in order to ring handbells with another and more advanced (!) group, while Colin and Gemma were off to live the lives of normal humans once more.‡ And after they had all negotiated the Kissing-Gate structure that leads to Robin’s front door***, Robin went off to hurtle hellhounds and I retired to her garden. I really needed to chop the heads off things for a while…
(Thanks, Robin. May I come and ring again sometime? :)) ‡‡
* * *
* I feel that ‘sitting-room’ is probably a slight misnomer in this case, unless you’re a book (or a form of recorded music). Sitting space for humans = five, at most. Shelving space for books, on every area of the walls not taken up by doors or windows = >10,000, easily. This ratio is, obviously, something we should all aim for. ‡‡‡
** This one is good for an absence of quite a few minutes as one naturally has to pet the hellhounds in their kitchen lair during both outward and return journeys. Hellhounds, during these sessions, have expressions I’ve not witnessed on dogs before. There’s a bit of ‘Our goddess has been away from us for 6.5 minutes/31.25 minutes/42.60 minutes, oh waly waly!’ but it’s mixed with ‘Did you hear how Xxxxx missed the 3 / 4 up dodge at that last bob?’.§ Robin may be raising the only canine handbell judges in the history of change ringing.
*** Having a small entrance area in conjunction with two hellhounds who would joyfully greet anything warm-blooded that comes through the front door does mean a combination of doors and gates that require a certain amount of timing and agility to negotiate.§§
* * *
* Mwa ha ha ha ha. Um . . .
** Gemma’s a beginner. She still thinks we do this for fun. We aren’t sure yet if she’s going to become a member of the true anointed, or whether, when the truth is finally revealed, she will blanch and shudder and take up bowling.
*** Wise woman.
† AND TRY TO IMAGINE WHAT A STRAIN THAT IS. I WASN’T RAISED IN THIS COUNTRY, YOU KNOW.
†† You missed some clothes moths. Let me point them out to you.
††† Yes. A dangerous sign. Did you notice the way some of the crumbs tend to blink in and out of existence on this plane?
‡ Colin is no more normal than I am! He rings full peals! He has his own set of change-ringing bells in his GARAGE! His only salvation is that he does not write fantasy novels.
‡‡ This Thursday at 4:45?
‡‡‡ ::Beams::^
^ I’ve still run out of shelf space.
§ This is all a ploy, you know, to get themselves invited into the sitting room. They are not totally thrilled with handbell evenings. Used to be only regular use of sitting room involved lying on sofa with hellhounds.
§§ ::Hilarity:: You’re right, it’s exactly like a kissing gate. Hellhounds are very smoochy.
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