Ringing Forums

Thank you all very much for your most helpful responses. The microphone would have to be inside, as it is intended to be a permanent fixture. I will pass your comments on to the company which is installing the church's sound system.
Happy New Year!

Thank you. The Beach Bellringers (i.e. the band at All Saints' Landbeach) would be very pleased to be a test site for this. Let us know how we can help you / you can help us.

Thank you so much Tristan, I have done as you advise.
Best wishes, Barbara

Dear All,
Tristan Lockhart mentioned the Yellow Yoyo report. Please could it be made generally available, urgently?
The reason I ask is that our tower has a massive recruitment opportunity, with a new town being built on our doorstep. But we need to know how to run our sales pitch, and for that it would be a big help to see the Yellow Yoyo report.
To tie in with the ageism concept, I confess that we will be looking particularly for young adults (by which I mean 20-40). The reason being above all that they will still be active ringers in 20 years' time. Whereas most of the current band (including me) won't!
Just observing - unless you are yourself an older learner, you probably won't notice ageism even if it does exist. Not because you are rude or prejudiced yourself - just because it is hard to notice any sort of prejudice unless you happen to be the target of it.
Best wishes & Happy Ringing!
Barbara

If you can find a tower with a simulator, that is willing for you and your father to go there together and practise on your own, you can learn methods that way. You just set Abel (or whatever program you are running) to Cambridge (or whatever) and off you go. You can ring it solidly for an hour if that is what it takes.
I would never have progressed in method ringing had I not been able to do this.
If you are really keen you can install your own mini-ring in your house. Seriously!

Thanks Lucy.

Thank you John

Thanks Alison, here at All Saints' Landbeach we shall shortly be requiring a dedication board for our 2 new bells, so would also like to know whom to ask to make it.

Definitely worth trying as an exercise to give your hands a different viewpoint.

Is it perhaps more not just about that one event, but about building a relationship with the media? We actually gave our reporter a present (home-laid eggs) so he would remember us and come back when we have our new bells installed.

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.