So, after a couple of months how is "The Plan" coming along. Well, there is progress, but we have had a bit
of a setback. One of the band has moved house. She has gone to live down south, near her daughter. She was one of the ones who could
ring Plain Bob Doubles, and was learning what happend at the bobs, so her loss has set things back a bit.
We also cancelled 2 practices in the last 2 months, due to holidays making us too few in number to do anything useful.
Nevertheless, the rest are coming along slowly. One of our "hunters" that was learning Plain Bob Doubles almost managed to complete
a touch (unaffected on 2nd). We got through nearly 100 changes when the treble just went way out
of place, and by the time I'd tried to put them right everyone else had fired up too much to carry on. The plain hunt on 6 is also
getting a bit steadier, and we made a half hearted attempt to ring a bobbed course of Little Bob Minor. The idea of that is that 1
and 4 just hunt to 4th place and back, while 2, 3, 5 & 6 do plain hunt on 6 with a "treble bob
turn around" in 5-6. It started off OK, but for some reason the ringers on 1 and 4 couldn't get the idea fixed in their heads to
turn round in 4th place all the time. One or other of them kept wandering out to the back and
fouling everything up. I think it is a useful exercise though, and we will keep trying it every now and then.
I also need to get them all out of the habit of treating practices as some sort of social get together. Two of the band plucked up
the courage to visit another tower on one of our cancelled practice nights. Hats off to them. I made a big thing of telling them
how useful it is to get out and about, meet other ringers, try other bells and practise more often. The thing that shocked them
most though seems to have been the lack of chit-chat in the ringing chamber. Maybe they will start to get the idea at last that
practice night is to practise ringing.
Anyway, keep coming back every now and then and read how things progress. Also, if anyone local fancies popping along on a Monday
evening you would be most welcome.