New Year Lite

Shall we?
Cough, cough, splutter!
Shan't we?
Cough, cough, wheeze...
A tricky decision.

As we approached the New Year, most of the ringers were suffering, to a greater or lesser degree, from seasonal lurgies.  This was a tad inconvenient, to say the least.  Our challenge for December was to ring a Quarter Peal (1250 changes of order) of St Nicholas Bob Minimus.  As St Nicholas Minimus is only 24 changes long, we would have to repeat it 53 times in order to reach the requisite number of changes.
"Twenty four changes?" I hear you say. "What can be complicated about that?" Well, quite a lot actually! There are several places you can go wrong. You can forget your backwards thirds and go charging through the bells dodging below you. This is never appreciated.  The other place you can come a cropper is to forget to dodge when you get back down to lead, and try and ring two blows at lead not one... Fortunately, the other person is usually looking out for this, and is delighted to point out the error of your ways!  St Nicholas is the most challenging four bell method we have learnt recently. However, our challenge of a quarter peal is now on hold; well at least until we recover from our myriad miserable malaises.

Having restarted ringing at Easter 2014, we have been keen to re-establish traditions from the past. One of these has been to ring the old year out and the new year in.  This involves crawling under the bells in the belfry and tying leather 'muffles' on to one side of each clapper.  This gives the required half-muffled sound at handstroke.  In order to allow the sound out, the belfry is rather open to the elements, with wooden louvres in the window openings, not glass. On the west side, the wind screams in, as there is nothing between the church tower and the ridge, several miles away.  Understandably nobody felt keen to go up and tie the muffles on, only to remove them again half an hour later, so that we could announce the new year with unmuffled bells.  Normally the conclusion of ringing early on New Year's day is marked with refreshments and crackers. This year we felt the only way we could cope with ringing to mark the change of year, was to do 'New Year Lite' - forget the muffles completely. No crackers. No hat's. No food. No toast to the New Year.  We would get the bells up just before midnight - ring 12 blows to mark midnight, ring in the New Year, and go home. That we could cope with :)

Did I mention it was dark?

The five available and relatively healthy ringers arranged to meet at 11:45pm to see out the final minutes of the month. Four arrived. Three went on ahead to put the fan heaters on. I stood in the open doorway, waiting for the last scheduled ringer to arrive so we didn't have to return. The security light went off, and I noticed the moonlight shining serenely on the roof tiles. I took a shot of this peaceful moment on my phone. Then the security light came on, and I could hear C coughing his way up the path.

We rose the bells, 2, 4 and 6, followed by 3 and 5, and waited.  Midnight arrived. As the bells were up DH had to ring twelve blows at Midnight with the bell swinging full circle, rather than chiming as per monks in cartoons.  Then we rang some reasonably struck rounds on the back five bells, before some simple method ringing.

When we had concluded our ringing it didn't feel like the early hours of the morning, so I  caught up on a few TV programmes I had missed, before reluctantly going to bed. The morning proper came far too soon, its arrival announced by the 7:30am alarm. My husband has been retired for several years. I have no idea why he sets his alarm so early, but he does. I often sleep through it, oblivious, but not this morning.  My only response was "Why?". He turned it off and we went back to sleep, reawaking at the more civilised time for a Bank Holiday when you have nothing planned, 10:30am.
Happy New Year!