Apologies but it was not a very good day of ringing. Jane has just returned from a trip overseas, and seems to have caught a cold while gone. Randy had a very busy morning, and was pretty tired. So we were both a bit cotton-headed. But enough excuses.

We were 4 today, and rang most of the rehearsal in the same positions: Randy on the trebles, Maggie on 3/4, Andrew on 5/6, Jane on the tenors.

We started with St. Clements College Bob, and got through 6 of the 7 leads before crashing. And then we couldn’t even get that far. So we conceded defeat.

We then moved to Little Bob, and after a few attempts were able to ring a plain course. So that was a result.

We returned to St. Clements College Bob, and after a couple more attempts actually succeeded in ringing it! It was a bit rough, but we did the whole plain course.

We decided to do something easy, and so rang Plain Bob. To show how fuzzy-headed we were, even this took us a couple of attempts! But we rang it.

We finished with another plain course of Plain Bob, but this time with different bells. Maggie was on the trebles, Andrew on 3/4, Jane on 5/6, and Randy on the tenors. Randy claimed he couldn’t hear the bells well, and so struggled. But we did ring this, and it was glorious, and a nice finish to our rehearsal today.

We again had three ringers today (Jane is still out of town). Maggie, Andrew, Randy.

We started with a plain course of Plain Bob, with Randy on 1/2, Maggie on 3/4, Andrew on 5/6, and rang it successfully on the first attempt! And a fairly good pace. It was a good start to the day.

We then rang St. Clements College Bob, in the same positions. We made a few attempts, and rang it correctly a couple of times. Another success!

After St. Clements, we rang Little Bob in the same positions. Again, we rang it successfully a couple of times (after a few false starts).

At this point, we decided to switch positions and see if we could ring the same things. So we shifted the bells left – Maggie on the trebles, Andrew on 3/4, Randy on the tenors. Little Bob was our first attempt, and we again rang that correctly, though it took us a few tries before getting it right. After ringing it correctly, we rang it again, and felt really good about ourselves.

Finally, we decided on St. Clements College Bob, not switching positions. This took us a little longer to get correct, but by the end of our hour, we got it! We were thrilled, to say the least. All of us learning a new pair, and we rang it successfully. After the successful ring, we decided to call it a day (Randy has an appointment this afternoon, and needed to cut short our ringing).

We had a small group today. Just Andrew, Maggie, and Randy. So we rang a lot of minor! Randy rang 1/2, Maggie rang 3/4, and Andrew rang 5/6.

We started with something we are all comfortable with – a touch of Plain Bob. It was a simple touch, with just a pair of Singles called, doubling the length of the plain course. Maggie was ringing 3/4, and so was the only one affected by the call.

We then rang St. Clements College Bob. This one took us a few tries to accomplish even a plain course. But we eventually got it, and even rang it a couple of times. At one point, Andrew decided to call a Single (again affecting only Maggie on 3/4), and we got through a couple of leads, but then failed.

We finished with Little Bob. This is such a fast a furious method! We were struggling with it, until Randy thought to call the special changes (when the treble is at the lead, and when the treble is at position 4). Once we realized how fast this was going, it was easier to get right, and we rang it a few times. Andrew was nice and didn’t call any changes.

By this time we had been ringing for more than an hour, and decided to call it a day. But we had a great time ringing!

No ringing today. Too many of us were out of town (and thus the delay in posting that there was no ringing!)

Like most of the world since March, we have been in lockdown, and so haven’t rung face to face in quite a while. But we decided that today was the day. It’s beautiful here in SoCal – the sun is shining, there’s no smoke in the air, and we could meet outside in Jane’s garden and ring with masks and appropriate distance.

Jane decided that this was not the time to rest on our laurels, and so introduced us to spliced methods, which we have never done. Of course, to do spliced methods, you need to be comfortable with multiple methods that you can splice between! We have rung Bob major multiple times (including some touches), and had started practicing Little Bob major before we stopped meeting. So today, we decided to first work on Little Bob until we were comfortable with it, and then splice that with Bob major.

Now, remember that we have never rung any spliced methods before. We had heard of them, and wondered. And had even asked Jane about them. She would give us a straightforward explanation, but explanations only go so far. You need to actually try to ring a splice to really understand them.

So, after a short explanation, we started ringing. The first attempt was short – we started with Bob major, spliced to Little Bob major at the first lead end, and then spliced back to Bob major at the next lead end. I believe that’s 40 changes? But we got it!

I can’t tell you what else Jane called, and we weren’t successful every time. If you remember what it was like when you first started ringing splices, we would sometimes forget which method we were ringing! But we had fun.

And then Jane decided that we needed to ring a touch splice. We weren’t successful at any attempt of that. But that just means we have good stuff to learn. And we will continue ringing splices and touches, both in ringingroom.com and face to face.

I haven’t written anything for a while. But we did something noteworthy tonight, so I need to record it.

We had 4 people tonight, who are working on a quarter peal of bob major. Jane, Randy, Andrew, and Maggie. So we started the evening with a long length touch of that method. We rang a 560 change method tonight, and did it on the first attempt, which I call a win! Not a quarter peal, yet. But we are creeping up on that target.

While looking for a new method to ring, Jane suggested we try either Little Bob, or St. Clements College Bob. Both look fairly straightforward, but while looking through iAgrams we stumbled upon a method named Little Little Little Little Penultimus Place. Looking through the blue line for this method, it looked very strange – the treble never gets to 8th place, but rather makes places at 7, causing the bell in the 8th place to stay there for four blows.

“Shall we try this?”

“Sure, why not?”

As we were ringing, we heard familiar melodies, because this seems to be a slightly truncated version of Bob Major. So after three or four attempts, we actually were able to ring this new method!

The most curious fact about this method seems to be that, you change positions when the treble is making 7ths, but other than that you just continually plain hunt. There is no dodging! So, for example, Randy was ringing 3-4, where he started in the 3-4 position. The 3 bell is the bell that makes 8ths in the first lead, which puts him into the 2-3 position. From there, he just rings that 2-3 position, with no dodges or anything else special, until the 4 bell makes long 8ths, at which point he is back in the 3-4 position until it comes back to rounds.

The same is true for 5-6 and 7-8. The same is NOT true for the trebles. But of course, the trebles change position at every lead end in Bob Major, and in LLLLPLP (to use initials!) the same is true, though the change comes when the treble is making 7ths.

It was a fun night of ringing, and getting to learn a little bit of a new method.