Ringing inside
We were not a hot happening band tonight at tower (bell) practise and so spent most of the time beating Monty through plain courses of plain bob doubles inside. He is taking that critical step across the threshold into the true arcane mysteries of method ringing: he is learning to ring ‘inside’ on his first bell in his first method. I personally think—and I am not alone—that this really is the moment when you become a method ringer . . . or not. Someone who can handle a bell competently and can do what they’re told, ie ring call changes,* will be welcome in every tower but the top level, six impossible things before breakfast and a full peal of Cosmic Gazpacho Delight towers—where the genuine inside but middling ringers like me wouldn’t be welcome either.**
However, once you can ring call changes, you will be persuaded to learn to ring treble. You are indicating, possibly involuntarily, because your ringing master has you in a stepover armlock camel clutch***, by agreeing to learn to ring treble to methods, treble being the easy bell in all the basic methods, that you are willing to go for the full deal—that after you’ve mastered treble ringing you’ll go on to inside. † The problem with this is that most non-obsessive negligibly-talented people can get as far as learning to ring the treble when all the treble is doing is plain-hunt over different coursing orders of the other bells. Where us ordinary drones need a brain transplant is to make that leap over the bottomless intellectual chasm that is learning to ring inside—learning to ring one of the bells whose line through the pattern is ziggy and zaggy—one of the bells that isn’t the treble or the tenor-behind (if any). Gaaaaaah. Okay, I have not experienced every mentally challenging pastime out there available to masochists and martyrs, but I am going to go out on this nice firm sturdy limb here and say there is nothing else like learning method ringing. Nothing. Else. And call changes are complete in themselves: out in the west country they have bands devoted to call changes only, and their call changes are a wonder to behold—er, hear. Behear? But a ringer who can only ring the treble is a broken or incomplete method ringer. Once they let you out of the camel clutch and start teaching you to ring plain hunt on the treble, you’re doomed.
Ah, the memories. Long-term readers of this blog may recall that I’ve described how I hit the bar and crashed at the ringing-inside fence the first time I tried to learn to ring, over a decade ago now. What I didn’t know was that the ME was eating my brain; I just thought I was too stupid to learn ‘inside’. And then the ME took me down and I spent eighteen months on the sofa. When I started walking again I didn’t go back to ringing because . . . I thought I was too stupid. I can deal with being mediocre (fortunately); I couldn’t cope with flat failure. I might never have gone back to ringing at all if I hadn’t moved into a little house two garden walls over from a church with a tower with some active bells in it. I’ve told you this too: I lasted about six weeks living in the cottage, I think, before I was phoning the tower secretary and asking if I could start coming to practise. The rest is history.††
Monty, however, is going to boil through learning inside like Desert Orchid chasing for the Cheltenham Gold Cup. ††† We dragged and prodded him through his very first inside last Monday at Old Eden, and Niall, giving me a lift back to the mews after practise was over said, Do you remember learning to ring inside? YES, I said. And I remember getting to the learning-inside point at New Arcadia and being sure I was going to fail this time too . . . which is perhaps why I remember it so vividly. It doesn’t seem all that long ago either when you’re trying to hold your own line through a simple plain course of plain bob doubles, for pity’s sake, it doesn’t get simpler, which is why it’s where most beginners get their baptism of fire, with the beginner’s minder way too audibly saying, [ring] over Robin, over Leo, now over Roger, under Roger, over Roger . . . LEAD NOW. Someone screaming lead now tends to make you lead now even when you’re supposed to be finishing your three-four up dodge. Gah.
I was perhaps not the only one unhinged by this experience: we ended with Niall asking me to call a touch of plain bob doubles. I want to go hooooooome. I did notice that when I called the first bob Leo disappeared out from under me when I was supposed to be ringing over him—this is the sort of thing a good conductor is supposed to be able to unstick: I’m doing well to remember to squeal bob at the right moment—but whatever happened, apparently they got themselves untangled because we managed to keep going. Except . . . the bells weren’t coming up in the right order. Whimper. I was calling the simplest touch there is—it’s called observation because you leave yourself alone and mix everybody else up—and you get to know how the pattern works itself out. You also learn the tune even if you don’t mean to‡ and this one was off. Whimper. I was sure it must be my fault but I thought I’d counted right. I didn’t know what else to do so I called ‘that’s all’ when I thought I should and waited for Roger to take unnecessary delight in telling me what I’d done wrong.
It wasn’t me. Vicky and Leo had got their bells swapped over and hadn’t figured out how to get them unswapped—it being late on a Friday evening and we’d spent too much time ringing plain courses for a beginner. It takes a village to raise a bell ringer too.
* * *
* Where you only move your place in the row if the conductor calls you to do so. You don’t have to remember anything. Except to not fall asleep standing up, which has been known to happen. —Two! You’re following the four! Two! Colin says he has occasionally reached out and grabbed the rope of a neighbour who is manifestly not on the planet. But then the rules change for ringers like Colin. Brrrrrr. Don’t Try This at Home.
** This is just a trifle on my mind because Bronwen is coming down next Wednesday and I somewhat foolishly asked her if she’d like to ring. Of course she’d like to ring. Silly question. But since Ditherington disintegrated, and Tir Nan Og’s schedule has become pretty erratic, the only local Wednesday tower I know is Forzadeldestino. Which is pretty much one of those towers. I have rung (elsewhere) for their ringing master however and I know one or two of their regular ringers^. Aglovale has evidently appeared in these virtual pages, since he has a blog name.^^ So . . . I’ve sent Forzadeldestino’s ringing master an email inquiry about visitors. A humble email inquiry.
^ A cat can look at a king, or a muddle-headed klutz can look at Margot Fonteyn. Speaking of cats, however, the Cat Statue Issue is not yet over. I caught Darkness today having crawled under the big lax shrub that is between it and the pedestrian pavement to have a nose to nose with it—when he clearly thought neither Chaos nor I was paying attention.
^^ I don’t give blog names to just anybody. For one thing, it’s too hard. I can waste terrifying amounts of time flipping through my FORTY SEVEN MILLION NAMES FOR BABY book and waiting for the ka-CHUNG! of the right name to connect with my skittering eye.
*** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Professional_wrestling_holds#Stepover_armlock_camel_clutch
† It doesn’t necessarily stay the easy bell later on, but that’s another tangent for another time.
†† Well, no not the rest. I still have to finish learning Grandsire Triples and bob major and Cambridge minor and . . . while we were waiting for Colin yesterday, Niall was telling me encouragingly how much like Cambridge Yorkshire is. In the first place, you can’t ring Yorkshire on fewer than eight bells. There is no Yorkshire minor. But my handbell epiphany was listening to Niall ringing a plain course of Yorkshire with a pick-up band^ years ago, when he hadn’t quite got the slave torc^^ soldered around my neck yet. I listened to them and thought, yes, I want to do that. Niall knows this. He manages to bring up Yorkshire on handbells every few months, just to see me twitch.
^ The idea of a pick up band for something like Yorkshire makes me feel faint and dizzy. Oh yes, I can ring Yorkshire on frelling handbells. Oh yes, I can climb Everest without oxygen. Oh yes, I can walk on water. Oh yes, I have the cure for cancer right here, I wrote it down the other night. . . .
^^ With the handbell runes etched deeply into it
††† http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Orchid
‡ Ringing by the tune in handbells is a common fault. Don’t do it.
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