Ringing Forums

Vicki, if you are a big, famous tower then maybe you could get away with charging a fee. But certainly a little country tower like us could not possibly do so. Recently, by good luck, we got a reporter from BBC local radio to visit our tower. We all (including the reporter) had a fun time and he has promised to come back when we have our new bells. We all felt it was a great way to spend our morning and it never occurred to us to ask for money (which I doubt would have been forthcoming).

Thanks Richard.
Thinking about it, I wonder if learning to ring BOTH ways round might actually be quite a good exercise for many ringers. Especially if someone has got stuck with a pattern of incorrect handling which is now ingrained too deeply for them to change. Maybe changing the handedness of their ringing would enable them to rid themselves of that fault.
Like - when I learnt to ride as a child we used to do mild gymnastics ("round the world", "scissors", etc) on horseback, in order to make ourselves more comfortable and relaxed, obtain a deep seat, etc. So if you become confident swapping the grip from hand to hand, it could make you less likely to hang on with a death-like grip. Which is where we started!

Thanks for comment.
Two of our band ring left-handed. You are right that the coils are not so easy, but they have worked out how to manage it.
Regarding the throw of the rope, it depends on the rope circle. I can ring either way round (as doubtless so can all of you) and sometimes I choose to ring left-handed in order to leave more space for the ringer next door.
I actually think everyone should learn to ring the opposite way round to their natural inclination. This is not just because I am perverse (although that is also true), but because I think it makes it easier to make your weaker hand do its fair share of the pulling if your dominant hand is lower and encumbered with the tail end

Going back to the original query, sometimes people accidentally cross the rope when making coils, and then that is why they cannot release a coil. So they have to be careful to lay the coils flat out on their palm side by side when making coils.

Thank you all for your advice which I will pass on to the student and her main teacher. Reading through your comments, it occurs to me that maybe the lady's best solution would be to re-learn to ring in style of a left-handed person.

Thank you John.
I have noticed that the ringer actually holds the sally far too gently and thus cannot pull it effectively. Although it is true she could be holding the tail end too hard.
It is hard for me to understand - is she just suffering the normal aches and pains that anyone may feel when taking up a new sport, or is she in serious debilitating pain that could cause a life-changing injury if she doesn't give up ringing immediately?
Has anybody any knowledge of medical conditions that could cause this problem? She did wonder about arthritis.

Thank you Lucy. The ringer has consulted her doctor, who was unable to offer advice except "rest". The ringer has exceptionally small hands and thin fingers - maybe that is relevant.

Thank you all for these very helpful comments, which are quite fascinating and will be very useful to me as project manager.

Thanks John, that's very helpful.

My answer is "no, it does not matter that fewer peals are being rung by fewer, older people" - as long as ringers are busy doing other ringing things which they find interesting / enjoyable / helpful to others. In my experience, this is indeed the case - there is now a much broader range of opportunities to make your own contribution than there was 20 years ago, when I started ringing. I used to ring peals because there wasn't much else to do if you loved ringing, but now there are many more options.

I am very sorry to hear about AJB.

I'm happy to hear that things are rosy in your area of the ringing world, but the national data that we do have suggests the opposite is true in many other areas. Can you lay out how that was achieved in your area? If there are are areas that have this problem cracked, I think it's important to share experiences so that struggling areas can learn from them — John de Overa

Gladly. In one phrase "community spirit". In more detail -

A strong and committed territorial association (Ely Diocesan Association of Church Bell Ringers), providing training and support.
A few public-spirited Spliced Surprise Maximus ringers who are not too proud to roll up their sleeves and teach basic bell handling to the same person for a very large number of weeks and months. You know who you are!
A larger number of decent ringers who enjoy pitching in and being part of a big group that works for the benefit of all.
A lot of lovely people who turn out week after week to not only ring for services, but also maintain the churchyard, set up for the church garden party, offer to change your wheel for you when you have a puncture and so on. They will never be great ringers, but they are the sort of people you are glad you know.
Willingness on the part of teachers and tower captains to celebrate what our ringers can do, not give up on them because they will never reach a high standard.

Reading the other posts, I am just musing if a town-country divide is apparent. It seems that correspondents in towns and cities are depressed because they see their bands declining in skill: perhaps they can no longer ring Surprise Major. Whereas correspondents in country areas are delighted because they see church & village communities kept flourishing by people who can only ring plain hunt.
Maybe what you see depends on how you see it.
Just pointing out - what do you actually do when you ring Spliced Surprise Maximus? You move up one place, or down one place, or lie still. What do you do when you ring plain hunt doubles? It's the same thing!

Phillip, I agree with you. Right now, in our villages, ringing is being kept going, our communities are flourishing, ringers are recruited, supported and trained to the maximum that they are capable of. This I believe is an achievement to celebrate.

Ditto. It will be interesting to see if they have grasped (what I perceive as) reality. — A J Barnfield

I am really hoping Yellow Yoyo will have me dressed in a yellow woolly jumpsuit, bouncing up and down on the end of a bell rope.

What would be the point of trying to teach advanced methods to someone who was just interested in service ringing, for example? — John de Overa

Well, from a religious point of view, service ringing is a way of giving glory to God. So somebody who is "just interested in service ringing" ought to be very highly motivated to develop their God-given talent to the utmost. This would be analogous to a great composer composing sublime music for the sung Mass.

As people have said above, ringers have many different motivations. So I would say any CC master plan for attracting, improving and retaining them has to bear that in mind.
Perhaps in the past there was too much focus on duty and service; nevertheless this motivated some people to give of their very best. If these concepts are now regarded as off-putting, and in its place ariseth the strategy of Yellow YoYo (which I can't wait to see), doubtless there will be some other actual or potential ringers who are put off by that.
There is unlikely to be one right answer, so can I ask, please, that any strategy takes account of that.

Thanks John, that's democratic as far as I am concerned :).
It's just a general problem I see with the subcommittee/workgroup structure - if the six or so people on the subcommittee don't like your idea then they have an effective veto. They probably will tend to agree with each other; otherwise they wouldn't be able to work with each other and would have fallen out before now. That makes for rather more of an oligarchy to my way of thinking.
Whereas, if you have a flat structure, so everyone votes on everything, you have a larger pool of people with more diverse views, so probably some will agree with you.

Thanks John, that's good to know. So suppose a CC rep has an idea, but can't get the relevant committee interested in it. Can they stand up at the annual meeting and say "I think we should do xyz"? That would be my test for democracy.

Well yes, one might reasonably think that. But then suppose one has an idea, goes to the relevant committee, is unable to get them interested, idea is stymied. What does one do then? If there is some measure of direct democracy then one has at some point a chance to stand up and impart one's idea to the whole group directly. To me that freedom is essential.