We had a rehearsal tonight with just three of us (Jane, Maggie, Randy). And with all our recent successes ringing quarter peals, we decided to do something different.

For the first 15 minutes or so, we rang plain bob minor, but with Maggie on 3-4, which she hasn’t done much before. She did well enough that we needed to continue on to something different. We had tried ringing reverse bob a few weeks back, and so decided to focus on that for a while.

Plain bob has a dodge whenever the treble leads. The dodge causes bells in positions 1 and 2 to stay in their positions, and the other positions to swap with their neighbor.

Reverse bob has a dodge whenever the treble is at the back, and causes bells in positions 5 and 6 to stay in their positions, and the other positions to swap with their neighbor. When you have rung plain bob for years, ringing reverse bob is disconcerting because the lead bell may not ring on both the handstroke and backstroke, which is something you get very used to when ringing plain bob!

So, after struggling with reverse bob for a while, we finally rung a plain course of reverse bob successfully! Maggie on the trebles, Randy on 3-4, and Jane on the tenors. After ringing it successfully a few times, we decided to up the ante.

Double bob has a dodge when the treble is on the front, and when it is on the back! On the front is easy – it is what we do with plain bob every time we ring it. But combining that with the dodge on the back promised to cause trouble. So we started. And rang it correctly on the first attempt! We were surprised, but perhaps unfairly so. We have been ringing together for quite a few years now, and are really starting to meld. And tonight proved that with that first attempt success.

We rang it a couple more times, just to prove that the success was not a fluke, and were able to ring the method successfully again and again.

So, we upped the ante again, and decided to attempt a touch of double bob. Sadly, we could not ring that successfully, even after multiple attempts. But we were able to get to the first bob successfully, and so we were quite pleased with ourselves.