More Young Ringers, a Funeral, and What of the Future?

After the success of the Fen Tigers success in June and Haydn’s Level 1 certificate we continue to focus on the younger generation. Em joined us four weeks ago to learn how to ring before she goes off to universtity in September. She has attended our normal practices to get to know everyone and become familiar with ringing jargon, and has rung handstrokes and backstrokes to Rounds. There have been weekly 1:1 lessons too and Em has made great progress. On week three she started to ring with minimal assistance, and by week four had consolidated this and rang Rounds, showing excellent awareness of what the bell was doing and being able to correct errors.

We have registered Em with the Learning the Ropes scheme and quite expect her to achieve Level 1 within the next few weeks.

At practice last Thursday Josh and Haydn rang up the trebles in peal and did a great job. During the evening Haydn started on his Call Change journey and Josh rang the tenor behind to Call Changes and the treble to Plain Bob Doubles. We have planned some quarter peals for Josh during August to help him achieve his LTR Level 3 certificate.

On Friday the 26th we rang a quarter peal of Plain Bob Doubles immediately following th funeral of Maurice Cain. Maurice was a supporter of the bells and his sons had requested that they be rung ‘open’ in celebration of his life. The family requested the tenor to be tolled for five minutes as the courtege left the church. We then rang the quarter peal and thank Becca Glazier (Thriplow) for making up the band.

An email from the rector thanked us for our ringing, “….and thank you for making the bells possible earlier too, as ever offering a hospitality and pastoral outreach to all those who come through our doors. Please do thank all who rang today – it was a great blessing to stand at the graveside and hear a peal of love, remembrance and sympathy…”

I have been thinking about the future of ringing in our own tower and nationally. Part of this involved writing a mind map to illustrate our (bell ringers) relationship with church and community. I followed this with a paper describing all the good things that we are doing and what challenges we face in the next few years. I am hoping it will generate some thought amongts ringers and I will report on outcomes in due course.