Two Thousand and Great – Week 47

Dear all

There’s a new Sally in my life, I seem to have carpet burns on my hands… but it’s not a new relationship – On Tuesday I attended my first bell ringing lesson (my original start to this sentence wouldn’t have got past spam filters as it mentioned swinging and bell ends…)

I heard back from the CCCBR and they put me in contact with a local church with a team of ringers – turning up a little early I made my way up a tiny spiral staircase up the tower to the bell room. After a little background about the church and bells. Slowly but surely the ringers started to turn up. My lesson started by watching the group as they worked through a couple of routines. As far as I could work out everything followed the lead of the tenor bell, but this started to go out of the window when one of the team started shouting out numbers, by watching I slowly started to worked out that the person however many left of the tenor called first took the lead followed by the second number. So far, so easy but I still couldn’t work out who the others were following. eg 3-5 meant the third bell to the left from the tenor took lead and was followed by the 5th bell.

After this I was given my first lesson, it all started with the back stroke, with my hands cup below waist level right over left the bell was pulled down, the rope went slack  before rocketing upwards pulling my hands with it. Just before the top of the swing the bell achieves almost neutral balance hanging directly upside down and a slight tug sends it swinging down again. After about 20 or 30 repetitions of this – the instructor worked out the bell was too light for me and I got switched to a heavier bell where I actually could feel through the rope what was going on.

I watched the ringers perform some more routines called Two Bob and Ganzer (?) – ganzer seems to be the one you hear when a wedding is in the Church, before I was given my next lesson the down stroke, On a rope there is a large fluffy section which is called a sally, the bell was set in the up position (upside down) so a light pull started it swinging, the sally falls towards the floor as you make the back stroke and as it is going up you grab it to pull it down again to speed up or slow down the bell. 

You only get  a split second to do this pull as the momentum of the bell whips it away. A lesson I learned incredibly quickly as I didn’t release it quite fast enough leading me to get lifted slightly off my feet and have the rope screaming through my hands for a pretty impressive carpet / rope burn.

I was honoured to be able to go up into the bell room at the end of the session, (when bells are rung on Rememberance Sunday they put mufflers on them and I was invited up to see the bells as these were removed.) The bells are huge, and despite understanding a little about physics the stays and the balances they didn’t look big enough to counterbalance the whole bell. 

Bell ringing is a lot tougher than I imagined, but, i’ll do it and hopefully pass this challenge. The tower physically moves when the bells are rung and I can’t wait to go back this week to hear the bells at their full volume.

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If I apply the same logic for how I became an artist eg. if I draw something and soemone else pays for it – I think I officially became a gigolo on Thursday. One of my favourite challenges of the year (to kiss 50 red haired ladies) was paid in full on Thursday, effectively meaning I was paid to kiss girls which equals gigolo…  (That said if I do bump into any more gorgeous red heads before the end of the year, I might still be tempted to use the charity as the excuse and pretend to still have a couple left to kiss to complete the challenge.)

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Today is the second of my November Strange days –  Homemade bread day – As I didn’t have the energy to get up at 4 am to bake before work I will do it tonight after swimming. (I’ve had to change my weekly regime to fit bell ringing in.) My plan is to try and make bread with pesto in, I have seen these in Carluccio’s but never tried to make them. I have an idea how to the pictures next week and the cookbook entry might tell you how it turned out. 

Today also marks the start of National Entrepreneur Week. I along with a group of friends have had a long term belief we could open a new drinks venue called the half a bar – the only draw back to this was the belief we could only Semillion – I’m doubting it’s viability… I will not even mention the restaurant idea (different more twisted friends this time) – that one really needs work. The premise is probably more tasteless than anything the kitchen might turn out.

I’m only saying this as the Dragon’s Den stars seem to come up to my work quite regularly and if amongst us we can come up with a good enough idea I am sure I can pitch it to one of them. If anyone has an idea that needs proposing send it through and I’ll see if I can get an answer. I might even be able to help out, lots of people keep telling me I won’t know what to do with my time next year, this might be a start.*

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Not long left now, but if you have a challenge please get them to me quickly as I need to plan these last few weeks.

Rob / Devani 

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PS> A few people might have seen one of these before.  

The Basic premise is – everyone on this mailing list is roughly the same age. If you’re stuck for in idea of what to buy someone as a christmas gift, we might be able to avoid blundering by sharing recommendations. if we all share our top 3’s of the year we can get an idea of what has been loved, liked and disliked in 2008 by people like us and possibly help come up with a top choice xmas gift for someone else. On my facebook group I have created a link where people can post theirs – http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?topic=6044&uid=7856163663

Here’s mine: Top albums of 2008 Sonny J – Disastro Noah & The Whale – Peaceful, The World Lays Me Down Los Campesinos! – We are Beautiful – We are Doomed Top Books of 2008 Joseph O’Neill – Netherland Is this supposed to be Funny – Dagsson (funny, but it’s dark.) Average American Male – Chard Kultgen (as above)

Over rated things definitely include Quantum of Solace – when I went to movies I remember that they used to have story lines and character development, this film lacked either and was therefore a collection of big explosions and action but nothing to engage you….

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* there’s also talk of a comedy / music / variety night in February in aid of Multiple Sclerosis which I have agreed to help out with in any way I can.