We regretfully lost two members this past week. Sally has moved to Alabama, and Paul to Minnesota. We’re hoping one or both will return soon. Until that time, they will be sorely missed.

But this loss was offset by the possibility of gaining a new member. Maggie came to ring with us today. She has rung in a tune ringing choir, and heard about change ringing at a recent Area 12 Spring Ring. She caught on very quickly, ringing the trebles for Plain Hunt on both 6 and 8 this evening! We’re hoping that she can ring with us more often.

While Maggie was resting from cramming all this information into her brain, Jane, Paris, Ange, and Randy started working on ringing a long touch of Bob Major. We started with a simple plain course, since Paris hasn’t rung with us for a few months. After doing so, we started with some bobs, just to get used to them. We hope to ring a celebratory quarter peal in honor of Paul’s newborn, scheduled to arrive in November. We have a lot of work to do!

We had a small group tonight. Just Paul and Jane and Randy. So we continued with our attempts at Kent Treble Bob minor, but just couldn’t get anywhere with it tonight. Maybe that had something to do with Randy just having returned from a week in the UK, and so still suffering from jet lag. Whatever.

So we decided to try some other things. First up was to ring a plain course of Bob Minor as fast as we could. After practicing once, we actually recorded it. The recording is on Jane’s phone, and if I ever get access to it, I will post it. We could do better, but the time of the method was 1 minute, 48 seconds. We’re working on getting it even faster.

But after recording a speedy Plain Bob Minor, we decided to try something completely different, and so Jane explained Double Bob. This is very similar to Plain Bob, except that there are half leads – when the treble is at the back, you make fifths, and bells 1-4 mix it up. (In standard notation, at the back end you do a 56.) We were able to ring that with Randy on 12, Jane on 34, and Paul on 56. We then switched bells, with Randy and Paul swapping. This didn’t go quite as smoothly, but we eventually got it. Finally, Paul wanted to ring 34, and so Jane took the trebles and we tried that. I don’t think we ever actually got through the entire method even once in that arrangement! But we will keep trying.

Sadly, tonight was the last night that Paul will be ringing with us regularly. He is moving to Wisconsin for a while. We’re hoping that he returns within a year, but we’ll see what happens.