We were three tonight – Maggie, Randy, and Andrew.

We’ve been working on ringing a quarter peal conducted by Andrew. He has found a composition that will give us 1344 changes (more than the 1260 needed for a quarter peal). I’m not going to get this exactly right, but it is essentially Bob Major with bobs at wrong, 3 home, single, 3 home, wrong, 3 home, single, and 3 home (and I’m not totally sure where those singles go!)

So tonight we attempted to ring that composition. Maggie on the trebles, Randy on 3/4, Andrew on the tenors conducting. We had a couple of false starts, each time getting further into the composition. The final attempt crashed just before a bob (I don’t recall which, but Andrew knew). Amazingly, we were able to reconstruct our positions and start at a bob near the middle of the composition! This is something we do occasionally (and which we find no other bands do). And after that reset we were able to finish the composition.

This was not a quarter peal. First, it was on 6 bells, so there were only 1008 changes (if my calculations are correct). And we didn’t ring the composition start to finish, though we did ring the entire composition over the course of the evening. But I believe those were the only failures. And it gives us hope that we can actually ring this on 8 sometime in the near future.

When that happens, we will brag about Andrew’s accomplishment; about all of our accomplishment. Stay tuned.