a new bell-ring­ing family

See the tiny lit­tle dot of light in the dark win­dow of the tow­er?  That’s the ceil­ing light of the dear ring­ing cham­ber at St. Vedast-alias-Fos­ter Lane, the improb­a­bly-named church that is my new ring­ing home.  Such was the beau­ti­ful evening atmos­phere last evening when I ambled hap­pi­ly to ring­ing prac­tice.  Just look, and try to imag­ine how mag­i­cal the evening was.  This is my view from the Mil­len­ni­um Bridge look­ing toward South­wark Bridge, with Tow­er Bridge in the far distance.

The light was such that for just a moment, one tow­er of Tow­er Bridge was lit as if from with­in, the stone glow­ing eeri­ly.  The oth­er tow­er of the bridge was in dark­ness.  Crouch­ing over every­thing was the mag­nif­i­cent Shard.  I know it divides peo­ple, but I love it.  Its soar­ing heights make it an ele­gant neigh­bor, over­look­ing us all with benevolence.

I must tell you that ring­ing, for me, has reached a new lev­el of all sorts of things: fun, com­mu­ni­ty, chal­lenge, and dare I say it, pride.  I know all about pride and where it goes and when, but hon­est­ly, if a girl can’t take a lit­tle hon­est pride in sur­viv­ing such a crazy hobby/sport/musical instru­ment, then I think life is a lit­tle the poorer.

I still under­stand my lim­i­ta­tions, which are every­where.  For one thing there are sev­er­al qual­i­ties that the ring­ing world recog­nise are shared by most ringers.  First and fore­most is a hap­py facil­i­ty with num­bers, because ring­ing is all about count­ing.  Count­ing your places so you know if you should be ring­ing first, sec­ond, third.  Where­as for me, count­ing has been a chal­lenge since child­hood and absolute­ly noth­ing will ever make me like num­bers, and I’m no bet­ter with pat­terns, a capac­i­ty most ringers have in abun­dance, like knit­ters, with whom there is a fair overlap.

Also, most ringers are quite intro­vert­ed.  Now, I don’t know what advan­tage this qual­i­ty would give me, but it’s a fact of the activ­i­ty that many ringers I have met would describe them­selves as shy, and also are very com­fort­able with what’s known as socia­ble silence.  Where­as I am def­i­nite­ly on the out­go­ing side, and a chat­ter­box besides.

So I real­ly should­n’t be ring­ing.  But I love it.  Even more than the ring­ing itself, I love the access it gives me to an intense­ly Eng­lish side, or depth, of life.  There is noth­ing more Eng­lish than change-ring­ing, and as Dorothy L. Say­ers mem­o­rably put it in “The Nine Tai­lors,” “Like most Eng­lish pecu­liar­i­ties, [it is] unin­tel­li­gi­ble to the rest of the world.”  I get to learn peo­ple, and places that I would nev­er find for any oth­er reason.

This is my ring­ing church, seen here last evening before prac­tice.  The tra­di­tion is that the first per­son to arrive switch­es on this love­ly sin­gle lit­tle row of pew lamps, because when we arrive in win­ter, of course, the world is pitch dark since the sun sets at about lunchtime.  But so far, even though the days are get­ting longer, it’s still dark when we leave after practice.

When I think of the church, I think “St Vedast.”  But when I think of the ring­ing tow­er, I think “Fos­ter Lane.”  There are Fos­ter Lane meth­ods of accom­plish­ing a great many things: to begin with, the Fos­ter Lane method of let­ting ringers into the church, which involves said ringers push­ing a but­ton at the end of a long cord dan­gling from the bellcham­ber win­dow (the first ringer inside has the key and puts the cord out), then stand­ing under the cham­ber win­dow and wait­ing for the deliv­ery of the keys, which in the Fos­ter Lane method arrive in a lit­tle bag attached to a tiny para­chute.  Because why not?  It’s more fun than any oth­er method.

First upon arriv­ing in the cham­ber, up the steep and wind­ing (and some­what pre­cip­i­tous, I hear from vis­i­tors who aren’t used to them) stairs, I have to appre­ci­ate the view.

It is the metaphor­i­cal equiv­a­lent of a fin­ish line of some mon­strous (or inspir­ing) race: to imag­ine one­self some­day in the ven­er­a­ble ring­ing cham­ber of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Of course there is the Fos­ter Lane method of call­ing changes, which I’ve now got quite used to and it seems nor­mal to keep track of my posi­tion, con­stant­ly, in a holis­tic way tak­ing into account what every­one else is doing, rather than just being told where to be.  At first it seemed mad­den­ing to be expect­ed to keep track of every­one, not just myself.  But in the end, I’m a much bet­ter ringer for being able (some­times!) to know the whole pat­tern, both by see­ing what oth­er ringers are doing and by hear­ing my bell, and every­one else’s bell.

Last night, I took a choco­late cake for a treat dur­ing teatime, as a ges­ture of sup­port for every­one’s kind­ness to me dur­ing East­er Sun­day’s Quar­ter Peal.

Because, yes, I’ve suc­cess­ful­ly rung my first Quar­ter Peal since arriv­ing in my new Tow­er.  I was a mass of nerves, naturally.

I’m try­ing to think of an equiv­a­lent to a Quar­ter Peal in any oth­er chal­leng­ing hob­by.  The activ­i­ty is sim­ple: pur­su­ing for some­where between 43 and 48 min­utes (depend­ing on how quick­ly your band rings) a com­plex, mem­o­rised set of ring­ing pat­terns.  I thought, why it’s a bit like a mini-marathon, but it isn’t, because you can’t make the deci­sion to slow down or stop if you want to.  It’s a team sport, not an indi­vid­ual sport, but again, with no time-outs.  Is it like a sym­pho­ny orches­tra play­ing a long move­ment?  Well, a bit, except that there is that love­ly thing called sheet music, to keep you in your place.  And a con­duc­tor.  Of course in ring­ing, there is a con­duc­tor too, but he’s also ring­ing, not just con­duct­ing.  Mag­i­cal peo­ple like my Tow­er Cap­tain can do all this at the same time, flaw­less­ly, whilst prob­a­bly also doing some quan­tum physics in his head, or com­pos­ing a poem.

I was the tre­ble, which means I start off all the dra­ma.  It’s my job to say, “Look to — ” and every­one must be ready, and in the­o­ry meet my eyes.  Then I say, “Tre­ble’s going,” and bring the bell to the pre­car­i­ous bal­ance — and then “Tre­ble’s gone,” or “She’s gone,” and then the ring­ing begins.  And does­n’t stop till it’s over.

Each one of us rings twelve blows in a cer­tain pat­tern, then the pat­tern starts again, but slight­ly altered.  So every twelve blows, I’d breathe a sigh of relief that I’d sur­vived and got to start fresh.  And every pull is a fresh start, really.

It was just a won­der­ful­ly chal­leng­ing activ­i­ty.  And the beau­ty of ring­ing with such accom­plished peo­ple is that they — the oth­er five ringers — are ALWAYS in the right place, so I could hone my own accu­ra­cy against absolute pre­ci­sion, know­ing that every sin­gle mil­lisec­ond’s depar­ture from per­fec­tion was down to me.  I learned so much in the space of that one Quar­ter Peal that I feel sure I’ll car­ry it away with me.

And your band­mates are your mates!  Every­one’s per­for­mance depends on the reli­a­bil­i­ty of every­one else (as befits a pat­tern), so when it goes well, we all know we did it together.

And my beloved Tow­er Cap­tain, he who had rung a Quar­ter Peal in Scot­land the day before, dri­ven all night, and would go on to ring anoth­er at St Paul’s in the after­noon, said, “That was very good.”  Now, I know that only parts of it were.  But to get there at all felt absolute­ly superb.  John and Avery kind­ly turned up to be sup­port­ive and took this love­ly, love­ly photo.

So after prac­tice last night, we repaired to the ven­er­a­ble Black Fri­ar pub, at the foot of Black­fri­ars Bridge, and I was stood a brandy to cel­e­brate.  In the Fos­ter Lane method of shar­ing, some one ringer bought every fla­vor of crisps the pub had, and they were grate­ful­ly con­sumed, while the amaz­ing dec­o­ra­tions of the pub were point­ed out to me.

I have been pen­cilled in for anoth­er Quar­ter, in April.  We sat on, in the pub, with our drinks and obscure ring­ing jokes, and in-jokes, some of which I even got.  I always have to learn it again, now mat­ter how many times I pull up roots and make a whole new set of friends: it’s ter­ri­bly painful, and a loss, to leave old friends behind when change comes.  But if I invest the hours and weeks and months, and go in good faith with some­thing we all love in com­mon, friend­ship will come.  It does­n’t replace the first friend­ships, but is a beau­ti­ful addi­tion, a new chapter.

There is noth­ing sweet­er.  So while I’m sure there will be more ups and downs in ring­ing for me, today at least, I’m hap­py because there is some­where I belong.  It’s a very wel­come feeling.