Ringing Forums

I’ve been watching this conversation unfold with interest. For me, the most telling statement in Oliver’s post was that the tower captain, in the context of the less than perfect striking, “made some uncalled for remarks on [his] bell handling!” Were these remarks in fact uncalled for? I suspect not. Good handling is the key to good striking. Unfortunately, it is not taught well or thoroughly enough in a lot of towers, with the result that many ringers end up with faults that, over time, become impossible to eradicate. Such ringers never acquire the ability to strike in the right place every time, especially if the bells are difficult. (I saw an example of this in my own tower this week: one of our longest-standing ringers was totally in the wrong place in Plain Hunt. When I pointed out the error, he apologised and said simply, “Sorry, bell handling”).

If a tower captain sees things in a visitor’s bell handling that he feels are preventing that ringer (and consequently others) from delivering accurately placed blows, it would be a good idea for that ringer to seriously examine their technique before concluding that the TC’s comments were uncalled for. It is helpful to watch videos in slow motion of oneself ringing and check every aspect. It may well be that the TC’s reluctance to let Oliver ring the tenor stemmed from what he noticed about his technique, and he was in fact trying to be diplomatic and tactful by saying he wanted a local to ring that bell rather than upset Oliver further by stating the truth. The best gift that any ringer can bring to any tower that they visit is good technique. That and a flexible attitude. They will be thanked for it!

How many regular towers do you ring at? Is it enough? In my part of England, it’s never enough as there are a lot of practices that max out at Grandsire Doubles on an average practice night so it’s hard to get enough practice. The more places you ring at, the more good ringers you get to know, the more WhatsApp groups you’re invited onto, the more opportunities for QPs will present themselves. Last resort: you could always arrange your own QP if you find someone willing to conduct it.

Far better of course to avoid it in the first place by proper teaching, rather than trying to undo a habit that has been repeatedly practised and become automatic.
Have you looked at The New Ringer’s Book? There’s a lot of detail on the basic mechanics and how to get them right.

— John Harrison

Absolutely. My teacher gave me that book to read at my first lesson. It didn’t help. My bad habit was there from the outset and we tried everything we could to stop it, with all manner of exercises using dummy tail ends etc and daily individual lessons for weeks on end. His teaching was fine — it was more a case of me being so terrified of the quickly moving rope that I couldn’t carry out his (or the book’s) instructions. When I did the ART one-day course, we were taught how to teach a complete beginner from a bell-down position rather than a bell-up position. I now believe this is how people in my situation should have been taught in the first place — it would have helped with my fear and avoidance-of-injury instinct, which I believe was at the root of my particular problem.

It’s partly my own experience of learning as an older ringer that makes me so passionate about making sure that others I see with the same faults are made aware of them and encouraged to correct them. I’ve totally succeeded with a 50-year-old newish ringer, but some older ringers who’ve been ringing for decades are much more challenging to fix — I haven’t given up hope yet, though, because I know from my own experience that it’s possible!

And of course — going back to the topic of the original post — the members of a Facebook ringing group have self-selected themselves as being more than averagely interested in ringing per se (as opposed to merely wanting to keep the bells alive or to join in church/village activities), so this might introduce bias into the poll.

Thank you all for your comments. It can take ages for older learners to master correct technique. I learned at age 60 and it took me nearly three years to eradicate that common “waving right hand” fault that many new ringers have. I was ringing five days a week in various towers, doing call changes and learning to treble to methods, yet I simply couldn’t physically make my right hand grab the tail end at the correct point. My teacher was in despair. He couldn’t cure me, so I pestered several other TCs and also some Facebook groups for help, to no avail. I studied YouTube videos in slow motion to try to analyse what I should be doing. I got very depressed about it all. In the end it was sheer cussed determination that made me cure it by practising on my own while everyone else was chatting during breaks, but it was an incredibly hard and counterintuitive thing to do, probably not helped by my terrible fear of rope burn or injury. Once I “got it”, I couldn’t understand why it had been so difficult. I see this particular fault in so many older ringers, with detrimental effects on their striking and control. This is all just to illustrate the point that the aspirations of older learners are necessarily coloured by their tuition, which is often incomplete and needs more careful and longer nurturing than is perhaps the norm. It can be very challenging indeed for a teacher to instill perfect technique in someone whose reflexes and flexibility are not as good as they once were, especially if the teacher learned in their youth and has forgotten what it feels like to learn to ring.

My home tower consists of older ringers with poor handling, poor bell control and poor striking, on heavy bells with plain bearings. The band is loyal and enthusiastic, but they don’t ring elsewhere so have never been exposed to any good ringing and their aspirations don’t go beyond ringing for services and weddings.

The tower captain — a newcomer to ringing who was also badly taught — has been kind enough to let me try to improve the band’s handling skills. We badly need to improve our striking in rounds and call changes, and I do not believe that the striking will ever improve if we only ever do endless rounds and CCs. I’ve been told (at an ART course) to be very careful when attempting to correct ringers’ faulty technique because it might upset them. However, I think it is worth the risk and the effort. To this end, in recent months we have started to devote the first half hour of the practice to technical work. Each of us in turn rings solo while all the others watch and comment and we try various approaches to eradicate handling faults and achieve better control. It is motivating and is proving to be great fun too. As a byproduct of focusing on individuals in this way, I have discovered some interesting facts: many ringers can’t hear their bell at all and have no idea at what point during the pulling process their bell actually sounds. Shockingly, one ringer can’t even tell which is the treble and which is the tenor and can’t discern any difference between the high and low pitches. So I’m doing ear training exercises with the band now too.

This approach wouldn’t work in many towers, where the formula at practice night is to alternate between rounds and CCs for the less experienced and methods for those who can. Books on ringing suggest various exercises that bands can do, but I never see this kind of activity in the towers that I visit. During rounds for the learners, there are often vague but futile instructions being shouted out like “listen to your striking” — not much use if you have no idea of when your own bell is striking. My impression is that training in many towers (in my part of Kent at any rate) does not focus enough on basic handling and listening skills at the very start of a new ringer’s apprenticeship. New ringers’ aspirations can only be set once they become aware of exactly what they should be aspiring to.

Is she a once-a-week home-tower-only ringer or does she go to other towers too? In my experience from ringing at several local towers, those ringers who never venture to other towers take years to get fluent at plain bob, let alone reach the stage when they can attempt other methods. Most of them get stuck where they are, and are still trying to ring touches of plain bob ten years later.

Motivation only sets in once you really do know what you are doing and start to gain confidence, which in turn only happens after hours and hours of rope time until plain hunt becomes as automatic as walking and you could do it in your sleep.

I came to ringing late and have always struggled with ropesight. My ropesight was so bad that the only way I could progress was not just by ringing 5 times a week for several years but also by bashing away at methods on Mobel for hours and hours on my phone and making sure that at least my rhythm was good even if my ropesight wasn’t. Using a simulator helped too. My ropesight will always remain poor, but thanks to Mobel I’m pretty good at counting places and can learn methods away from a tower. There’s no way on earth that I would ever have rung quarter peals and even a peal without such digital aids to help my learning curve.

If your learner doesn’t currently use Mobel/Abel, it might be something that could help her.

In my area, most of the towers have their own WhatsApp group and many of us belong to more than one of these groups. There’s also a WhatsApp group that covers several towers within a local area. Putting in a request on one or several of these groups usually results in enough volunteers to make up a shortfall, or even a whole band, within hours if not minutes.