Ringing Forums

Better involve a website techy also — Bob Blanden

Decide what you want first. Words and pictures aren’t high tech.

even if it could be retrieved and made available. — A M Hodge

That would be easy. If the pages were moved out of the ‘archive’ directory to their original location then the links woukd automatically work again.

I am also surprised that nothing has been produced by the CCCBR since the 1990s. — A M Hodge

That’s not true. I don’t have a copy of the 1990s publication, so can’t directly compare them, but the online resource produced by the PR Committee in 2012 was definitely advice. It would still be available had the latest revamp of the website not thrown away so much content.
The pages are still on the archive site, but not really usable because as I explained the links were broken by the move.
For anyone interested, the move added ‘archive.’ before ‘cccbr’ in their URL but the links embedded in the still refer to ‘cccbr …’.
(And for anyone who wonders why the site used absolute links rather than relative links, which wouldn’t break - I can’t understand why they did that either.)
See: https://archive.cccbr.org.uk/services/pr/advice/

Another thing I remembered when digging out the Guidance was a series of articles I wrote for the PR Committee, that didn't find favour with the powers that be and so were never published. Form your own view: http://jaharrison.me.uk/New/Articles/ReporterCalled.pdf

It doesn’t seem to be available any longer — Bob Blanden

That happens with a lot of CC resources, and not just in print. The second time the website was reinvented a lot of resources were lost, including the advice I produced in 2012 for the PR Committee. The content is still on the archived version of the old website, but the way it was archived broke all the links between pages. There's an early version at: http://jaharrison.me.uk/New/Articles/PRAdvice.pdf . There were some changes after that version, but as Bob says, anything that old would need updating anyway.

at the bottom of the backstroke their hands tend to dwell in front of their lap, as they will have been told when starting to ring backtroke only — Peter Sotheran

That’s why it’s a good idea to introduce the two stroke action as early as possible. Otherwise their bodies will learn that ringing is about ‘move and pause’, which makes it difficult to learn the desired ‘move and move and move, …’ action.

the fact that the wheel can push the rope faster than gravity has been known for a long time. So where there are dramatic videos of the rope being pushed away from the wheel. Any tendency to move sideways while ‘in flight’ can obviously mean it doesn’t land back in the groove.
You sometimes see a ‘flapping board’ fitted to a frame where an outward flying rope could hit another wheel or a bearing housing. We have one.
Btw i sent John an email a couple of weeks ago asking about progress since I rang his simulator a year ago but not heard so far.

believe that if we want ringers to take on the implied contract that, having been supported in our development as ringers, we are duty bound to support others following on behind (at whatever stage we happen to be at), then it gets a bit muddied when a financial transaction is introduced — Mary Jones

The idea of a contract is a myth. People learn for nothing and some of them give back freely, but there is no contract. I there were then there would be no shortage of teachers an£ helpers.

pulling down at 30mph and then the hands rising up at 40mph to catch the sally'. — Peter Sotheran

Regardless of the actual speeds that must be wrong. First the speed varies a lot, from zero to quite fast in under half a second, and second because the bell swings symmetrically, so the movement of the rope up and down is also symmetrical, at least during the relevant part, ie ignoring what happens during the lower parts of the stroke, where they differ, and also ignoring the fact that the handstoke rises very slightly more to give the open handstroke.

if the problem really is not knowing how far they have gone that might help but sadly in many cases the problem is execution. Saying the name of a place doesn’t help them to know where it is and how far from it their bell is, nor the action they need to get it their. The counting goes on in one part of their brain, separate from the rest which carries on doing the same unsuccessful actions as before.

place making is a useful exercise but not really a transition to hunting. There isn’t time in one blow to change to ringing at a different speed. It is a single step rather than switching to going up or down hill.
Failure to get right to the back is made worse in Doubles because you arrive at backstroke, which with most ringers tends to revert to rounds speed.
Many ringers who ring by following ropes don’t consciously change speed, they merely make a number of enforced steps, the aggregate effect of which is an approximate speed change, but one that is always a bit behind the curve, and fails as soon as they fail to see the next rope to follow. That might be what happens at the back.
A very good exercise if you have access to a simulator is to get them to ring rounds at normal speed (say 3h peal speed) and then ring rounds at 3h30 speed and at 2h30 speed, which correspond to hunting up and down on 6. If you simulator has visuals turn them off because you want them to feel what ringing at different speeds is like, without the distraction of jumping to follow ropes.

I’ve never specified sally parameters when ordering a rope. I don’t know whether firmness can be varied but thickness presumably could. The rope markers I’ve dealt with, most recently Avon Ropes, have always been very helpful so you could try asking what is possible.
However be warned, in my experience ringers will complain about Sallie’s being too thick as well as too thin.

public absolutely can tell the difference between good and bad ringing. — John de Overa

While on an outing once we went into the village shop to buy an ice cream, and when we mentioned ringing they said how nice it was to hear thei bells rung properly.

even our practices are public performances — John de Overa

They are public, but they are not performances!

It sounds to me like you are putting a lot of responsibility and stress on yourself, I don't think that's a good idea, either for you, or the band. I think you need focus on your and the band's enjoyment of ringing, the rest may well follow. It's hobby, not a job. — John de Overa

Yes, it's easy for a leader to take on too much of the burden, especially those who don't find it easy. There's a tendency to blame yourself for all the things that still aren't right, rather than accepting that you've managed to get some things right that otherwise wouldn't be.
It's an occupational hazard. An effective leader has to want to make things better, and that makes them sensitive to all the ways in which they could be better but aren't (yet).
Yes, a band needs to get satisfaction and reward out of what it does now, rather than postponing satisfaction until it achieves some (possibly unachievable) goal. But interpreting satisfaction as enjoyment is a short step from that over stated desire for ringing to be 'fun', an easy slide into superficiality. Ringing (in public) is a performance, not 'messing round with bells'.

How does a band decide where on the continuum it lies? Does a consensus develop? What role should the Tower Captain play in this? — Barbara Le Gallez

Decide is too specific. Individuals will have a natural tendency towards somewhere on the spectrum, and they will influence the aggregate position of the band. If they are similar the aggregate position will easily coalesce. What happens if they are different is more interesting. A keen majority might inspire a less keen minority to join them, or might put them off so they dig their heels in. A non-keen majority might encourage a keen minority to stop trying and take it easy or might make them frustrated. (And many other variants).
The Tower Captain's role is to help the band to coalesce and to find its purpose. How to do that will depend on the mix of individuals, and might not be easy. With a large band some two tracking might be possible, with the keener ones pushing themselves forward while others take it more easily, but with a small band one or two who 'don't want to' can prevent the rest doing anything.
Even a performance oriented band is about more than just ringing, and needs social and community elements, and these aspects can be used to help hold it together a band with more divided inclinations, and the sense of cohesion can then help outliers move towards the collective position.
Like all management, it's not easy, can take time, and can feel a bit dispiriting since there's always something not right yet

people struggle to progress beyong plain hunt and I believe that we expect them to pick up a myriad of micro-skills by magic — Rosalind Martin

That's very true. The most important thing a teacher can do is to try to determine through observation what the deficient micro skills are, and then work with the pupil to try to find ways to strengthen them.

we may over-focus on ropesight and memorising the circle of work, — Rosalind Martin

We obsess about ropesight as a magical power but it isn't ofte taught or even coached. And it's only one skill - a navigational aid. And memorising the circle of work is a relatively trivial task compared to the underlying skills needed to translate it into making the bell do the right thing.

, the missing micro-skills are mostly around bell handling. The plain hunt they have "mastered" is actually badly struck. They are not yet ready for bob doubles! — Rosalind Martin

Agree entirely. They've not mastered hunting they've merely found a way to survive getting through it after a fashion - often relying on lots of tricks that don't carry across to ringing a method.

I run weekly simulator sessions and as far as possible I make them participant led. It's a low pressure environment and if they want to spend half an hour practicing the same thing over and over, that's fine. — John de Overa

Yes, I agree. Much less pressure, and although I am typically sharing my attention between two or three people each gets more `individual' coaching and attention than they would in a typical practice (as well as getting far more rope time).

people's first attempts at PH are done that way as well — John de Overa

Many of the people in my sessions have been taught by others and already tried hunting the traditional way but the great value of using a simulator (without visuals) is to give them the experience of what ringing at the three different hunting speeds 'feels like'. I get them to experienced ringing rounds at 2h30, 3h and 3h30 peal speed before they try to switch between them while hunting.
That helps get over the problem with the traditional approach (whether learning numbers or counting places) that whatever the brain is doing the body wants to keep ringing at the same speed.

Techniques for gaining ropesight can be taught, but almost universally aren't, instead people are told to just hope for divine intervention. — John de Overa

It’s worse than that, they are often told to look at the bell they are following (or the one they are about to follow, though how they know which one without learning the numbers isn’t explained). Either way, looking at individual bells narrows the field of view and makes it harder to develop ropesight, ie the ability to make sense of what the other ropes are doing.

If others don't see it like that, how do they see it? — Barbara Le Gallez

That's a fascinating question, which could be the subject of some interesting research.
I don't know all the ways ringers think about ringing, but just from observation it's clear there are some quite different views. To understand them I think you would need to account for several dimensions, for example:
Importance:
'I ring because there's a gap in my life it happens to fill' through to 'I can't imagine ringing not being a major part of my life'
Performance quality:
'Ringing is an enjoyable social activity, I don't think about quality' to 'Ringing is a performing art, I try to ring as well as I can'.
Purpose:
'I ring to satisfy myself' to 'I ring as a service to the church / community'.
And so on. As I say, it would make a good research project.
At the day to day level, we just have to recognise that we don't all have the same motivation, qualitatively and quantitatively.