Well watching ringers who are better than you really. We had a visiting band in the area last week and they were generally much better ringers than me. They joined us for a practice night at Evesham Bell Tower and I learned so much by standing behind them and ringing with them. I followed the 5th though a whole touch of Stedman Triples. It is so much easier to see what is going on if the bell is in the right place - which it was because somebody who knew what they were doing was ringing it. By not ringing it meant I could count my dodges through the Bobs and Singles without worrying about which way I was going in, and when I did go in the wrong way I noticed and sorted it out - and it didn't put anybody else off because it was all happening in my mind. I then embarrassed myself completely by double dodging 3-4 at a single in Grandsire Caters and firing the whole thing out. Actually it didn't fire out as everybody else rang round me, but I got myself so far out it was unrecoverable and the conductor quite rightly stopped it. However, before that disaster I was really enjoying the ringing and actually being able to make a serious attempt to strike my bell properly because everybody else's striking was so good. I further embarrassed myself by ringing the tenor to call changes on 12 and dropping it down to 8ths place and staying there quite a while! I blame the springy rope.........
I wasn't the only one learning either, one of the less experienced locals had her first go at ringing the treble to both caters and cinques and all the locals really enjoyed ringing the big bells - something we don't get to do very often as there are rarely enough of us. We were all very entertained by the Tower Captain receiving a text from the vicar saying how much he was enjoying sitting in his garden listening to the bells and the practice finished in fine style with a lovely half course of Cambridge Major on the back 8 (I followed some of that too, but lost myself when some unexpected 5-6 dodges appeared!).
I enjoyed the evening so much I was disappointed that some of the locals had taken one look at the number of people in the tower and decamped to the pub! We are a 12 bell tower and we so rarely get to ring the12 that we are not really very good at it. It's a chicken and egg situation - we don't ring 12 because we don't usually have enough people who can, and we don't have enough people who can because we don't do it very often Therefore it seems such a shame that people passed up the chance to practice when we had an opportunity to do it well- to establish a good rhythm, be able to hear the striking and to learn to place big bells relative to little bells and vice versa. If we had all had a go at call changes on 12 and found out what it should be like there may have been a better chance of achieving it next time we have a go ourselves.
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