There Is Hope*

 

I was climbing through eight hundred years and forty-six thousand miles of church history this evening, which is the system for gaining access to Forza's ringing chamber, and thinking, you could want to join this tower for its scenic approach alone.  Or possibly as an exciting addition to your fitness programme.  I dragged myself through the last arrow slit, which is at the top of a spiral staircase so tight that even the outsides of the steps are only long enough for Flower Fairy feet, and collapsed fainting on the floor . . . next to Charlotte, who, by her gasping breaths, had clearly only just arrived before me—and who is also a visitor.  Maybe you get used to it.  Maybe the members have a secret lift. 

            I had spent a good bit of today telling myself briskly that I was going to Forza tonight** and that it was just another tower and the years, the miles, the thirty-seven bells and the Rhode-Island-sized ringing chamber*** are all incidental.  Then I got there.  I suppose the fact that your first view of it, every time, is from the floor with a red haze of oxygen deprivation and lactic acid build-up clouding your vision, may have a demoralising effect.  I lay there tonight thinking, well, I did bring my knitting . . . †

            And I did not get off to at all good start with a bell rope in my hands.  Which is to say I once again made a drooling foozle of Grandsire Triples.  ARRRRGH.  It was so drooling a foozle that even standing behind someone ringing it accurately I still couldn't see what was frelling going on.  I'm going to develop a complex.  I can ring it perfectly well †† in other towers.  But put me in an 800-year-old abbey with a ringing chamber you need satnav to negotiate and I lose my mind.†††  ARRRRRRRRRRRRRGH.  If there had been a sword I'd've fallen on it.  You'd think in a ringing chamber the size of Rhode Island there would be at least one sword hanging on the wall somewhere, wouldn't you?  But nooooooo.  Just peal boards,‡ notices,‡‡ and handbells.§  So I crawled away and hid in a dark corner.‡‡

            I was hauled back out again by a call for plain frelling hunt on ten.  I can't do ANYTHING on ten.  Ten is too many, even when it's just plain hunt.  The thing about ten is that you have to hold up and wait, every frelling blow, because there are so many other bells in the row to ring before it's your turn again.  So it's bong and then you stand there with your arms over your head thinking you could have got half a row of knitting done while you're waiting§§, and then it's bong again.  Also there's always a bit of necessary speed control adjustment—not only do you ring more slowly going out than going in, you also ring closer over smaller bells and with more of a gap over bigger bells.§§§  When there are ten of the frellers all of this is very exaggerated, which makes it additionally difficult for notable foozlers like me. 

            And then . . . it wasn't too bad.  I was actually getting the hang of the holding-up-and-WAAAAAAAITING thing.  I tied up my rope at the end without having a last despairing look round the walls for a sword.

            I hung around watching people ringing things I should to be able to ring, but probably can't at Forza.#  And then finally, at the very end, I was offered a rope of my very own again, to ring bob minor.  Dear miserable gods of ringing and disgrace, I OUGHT to be able to ring bob minor.  I ought to be able to ring bob minor dead, drunk, asleep, and suffering severe lactic acid overload.##  

            And, indeed, I did ring it, despite being alive, sober, awake and maybe a little lactically acidulated.  I also did despite the fact that someone else was going wrong, this being the true sign of knowing a method, being able to hold your line when other people are failing to hold theirs.  I was not ringing it beautifully, but I was ringing it—and I was ringing it in one of Forza's horrible queues, and since I was on the four I had several### people on each side, which means you need 358.5° vision like a horse (or a robin). 

            So.  Yaay.  There is hope.  I will go back next week.  Note that I am announcing that here in public.  I am going back to Forza for next Wednesday's bell practise.

            And tomorrow I start the third draft of SHADOWS. 

* * *

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaand . . . look what arrived in the post today: 

I think I may have heard a rumour somewhere that it was published yesterday

 

* * *

* Maybe. 

** After all I had told the blog I was going to Forza tonight.  

*** Sure it's a small state.^  It's a VERY LARGE ringing chamber. 

^ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhode_Island 

†  I have half a leg warmer on my needles.  Maybe even two thirds of a leg warmer. 

†† sometimes 

††† Maybe I have lactic acid build-up in my brain. 

‡ My situation was made somewhat more precarious by the fact that the Scary Man was in charge tonight.  They have a kind of rotating ringing mastership and you don't know till you get there on the night who's going to be beating you with the knotted rope . . . I mean, who's going to decide what methods to ring and who's going to ring them, and whapping you up longside the head when you . . . I mean, who tries to wrest a modicum of order out of campanological chaos.  I confess to feeling a little fragile about ringing admins at the moment but he hasn't done anything to me yet . . . except give me bells to ring and say I'm welcome to come again. 

‡‡ Full peals are these ghastly feats of ringing endurance, and significant ones frequently get painted on a varnished plank—the names of the method and the ringers, the date, and sometimes the time it took, which is usually around three and a half hours—and hung on the wall of the ringing chamber involved. 

‡‡‡ 'On 18 February there will be a sale of all the umbrellas, bicycles,  spectacles, spectacle cases, mobile phones and small children left in the abbey grounds, proceeds to the after-service cake fund, the canons have been complaining about the shop biscuits' 

§ I have no idea.  If I keep going, I'll ask. 

§§ It's almost as bad as that frelling stoplight on the way to Nadia. 

§§§ Yes.  It's horrible physics.  And I don't think you can even get any of the fun quantum stuff out of it.  It's all that unpleasant fellow Newton. 

# I've told you on previous devastatingly humiliating evenings I've spent there:  in the first place because there are SO MANY FREAKING BELLS if you're only ringing six or eight of them, they're in a queue, not a circle, which is maddeningly confusing for those of us who are easily confused and are used to ringing in a CIRCLE,^ and also, I assume again because of the frelling SIZE of the ringing chamber there's something peculiar about the acoustics.  Which in my case is to say I can't hear a thing but a kind of smudgy blast of noise. 

^ Remember that you're always looking frantically around for the next bell to follow.  Your sheer frelling depth perception is off if you're suddenly looking along a line instead of across and around a circle.  

## Gemma was there tonight and said to me after, of course we can ring bob minor.  It's ringing it on only one bell that is challenging.  

### All right, my definition of several is a little loose.