Ringing Forums

John

In response to your comment that "SG in general is a confused shambles.", the problem is not in the guidelines. They may be overly voluminous but they are ultimately both understandable and, in my opinion, show a reasonable balance of risk versus ability to carry out desirable activities. The problem is that they are guidelines not authoritatively imposed rules.

I have a military background were exercises involving different 'sides' are conducted using safety rules that aim to make the training achieved as realistic as possible whilst keeping personnel and material safe. These rules are set by an exercise commander and personnel are trained in there use. This model does not apply in the Church, whose tradition is that individual incumbents and PCC's have individual responsibility. Parishes have considerable licence is how they apply guidelines. If the incumbent, PCC or indeed the Parish Safeguarding Officer is particularly risk adverse and perhaps do not particularly value bell ringing then they can and do place safeguarding requirements on ringers that far exceed CofE guidelines.

As we increasingly do not have enough suitably skilled ringers to follow the historic tower based ringing model and become more peripatetic, we want common rules to many aspects of ringing that apply across the CofE; not guidelines that can be interpreted or ignored by individual parishes/cathedrals. SG in general is a confused shambles not because SG is inherently confusing, but because CofE governance is, perhaps deliberately, somewhat loose and therefore shambolic.

Having looked into safeguarding when producing our safeguarding policy the answer is pretty simple. A person who is not DBS cleared should not be supervising ringing if children, young persons under 18 or vulnerable adults are present. As someone in that category could turn up as an unannounced visitor, it seems very unwise to have a person who is not BDS cleared as a Tower Captain or Deputy, even if there are no children, young persons under 18 or vulnerable adults in the band.

If the Tower Captain knows that a member of the band has failed a DBS check then they would be ill-advised to use them as the 2nd adult needed when children, young persons under 18 or vulnerable adults are present.

I see no reason to ask them to leave, assuming the diocesan authorities have not banned them from being in a ringing chamber. It is then down to good leadership by the tower captain to keep an eye on their behaviour and particularly any attempt by them to arrange to meet children, young persons under 18 or vulnerable adults outside the tower setting. i.e grooming activities.

What you are talking about is called coursing order and is one of the cues ringers use to keep themselves, and as a conductor to keep others, right. It becomes more obvious on higher numbers and as ropesight is more difficult on higher numbers is a very useful check and also a method of putting yourself right. See http://guildfordguild.org.uk/training/ringing-concepts/coursing-order/ for more details and links to other web-pages.

Ultimately knowing which place you are in is essential to good striking, which is achieved by constantly comparing where the sound of the bell in your place is heard with where that place should sound in the row: and then adjusting next time. Ropesight, counting your places, listening and understanding how the work of different bells fit together, are all ways of maintaining situational awareness of where you are and where others are when ringing

As someone who used to navigate ships, I can tell that you need all aids to navigation you can get so that you can check that they giving you consistent answers. If they are not consistent with each other you need to do something about it. The same is true is ringing you need all the aids to navigating the method that you can get. Coursing order is one of them and well worth while getting ringers to understand.

Two comments:
1. To ring call changes well you need good bell control. Whether CC is to be what they ring for the rest of their ringing lives or if it a step towards method ringing, each change should be clean. It should not be acceptable for ringers to gradually, if at all, get their bell into the right place after a number of rows. So if you are moving a large bells down a place you will need the same bell control techniques as you do for hunting down in a method. This speaks to good CC being about ringers knowing what place they are in so they can adjust their striking being more important that knowing which bell they are following.
2. Bell control technique needs to be practiced and more regularly coached (if only we had the coaches). In most sports and musical activities much practice focuses on basic techniques: the golfer's swing or the musician's scales.

Having taken on the role of to chair the CCCBR Volunteering and Leadership (V&L) Workgroup on an interim basis until a new Workgroup leader is appointed, I have been following this discussion with interest. What has been said will feed into my thinking about how the stated activities of the V&L on the CCCBR website can be progressed. Please keep the contributions coming.

In addition to reading what’s on this forum and see what’s in the Ringing World, I also subscribe to the New Statesman, the following passage from this week’s edition stuck me as having parallels with the where we are with Median Ringers. In particular, the final clause.

“When Mr Johnson declared in his Tory conference speech last year that “We are not going back to the same broken model with low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity”, his diagnostics of Britain’s economic defects was correct. But, as was the case under his predecessor, Theresa May, analysis has not been equalled by prescription.”

We have broad consensus on the problem; now we need answers.

As a once lapsed ringer myself, the reasons for lapsing were: young family, career and yes, no support mechanism that kept ringers who could not commit that much time in touch with ringing. Now back ringing regularly I am a tower secretary, local education officer and engaged in a CCCBR Workgroup. The topics of both re-engaging with lapsed ringers and nurturing them though those demanding family and career life stages are high on those I wish to promote..

As it happens I was at a meeting of our local branch committee members talking recovery this morning. It has been suggested that we form a branch level 'Support Group' covering recruitment, retention etc. I will point my fellow committee members at the forum as a good place to start networking with others who have done or are thinking of doing something similar.

We tried one at Fridays practice with about 12 people in a reasonably sized ringing chamber with windows open on the North and South paces of the tower. Levers rose from about 400 ppm rising into the 900's by the end of the practice.

The results do however give me, and others, an excuse for making trips as quarters and peals progress, as a quick internet search on "co2 brain function" showed. This included the following link: https://www.news-medical.net/news/20200421/Atmospheric-CO2-levels-can-cause-cognitive-impairment.aspx