Today there were four of us; the usual suspects: Jane, Andrew, Maggie, and Randy.

We started with a plain course of St. Clements College Bob, and succeeded! Randy on 1/2, Maggie on 3/4, Andrew on 5/6, and Jane on 7/8. A good start to the day.

And then we got ambitious, and decided to ring a touch of St. Clements College Bob. Originally, Jane thought she would just call random bobs and singles. But before we started she changed her mind, and went to look up a real composition. Not gonna lie – we struggled. The first bob is not until the 6th lead, so we need to get through almost the entire method before that first bob. You would think that, having just rung the method, this would not be a challenge, but for some reason it was. And of course, once we got to that first bob, it gave us all kinds of trouble. So we took a look at what we actually intended to do, and because we are ringing handbells, we can just jump to any point, so we started up at the point of the bob. We got through one more lead, where another bob is called, and we failed again. So we looked at what needed to happen, went back to the point of the first bob, and tried again. This time we got through that second bob, but crashed soon afterwards. OK, let’s instead ring something we know better.

So we moved to Little Bob. This is a fairly easy method, and we succeeded on the first or second try. Whew! We’re not losing it quite yet.

Next was a splice of Little and Plain Bob, with some bobs thrown in for good measure. We actually got quite far with this before we crashed. But it was fun and mind-stretching, so all in all a good time.

We finished with a fairly fast plain course of Plain Bob, rung twice in a row, and succeeded.

All in all, a good day of ringing.

We will not ring next week, as three of us are otherwise engaged. I hope we can ring on the 25th, and I will report on our progress at that point.