I’ve been Nialled

 

The last few weeks . . . months . . . have not been splendid in every way.  You hear about most of the bloggable stuff*;  I assume it will not surprise you that quite a lot of screaming, throwing things and hiding under the bed happens off line and stays off line.  Arrrgh.  I also make periodic attempts to yank my life into something more nearly resembling order** which always involves . . . less.  Less doing stuff.  Less running around.  Less overbooking myself because there seems to be white space in the diary.***  Less signing up for new stuff.†  Less acquiring stuff.††  Less less less less less.†††

Feh.

However.  In the scrum of failing to become organised, things get lost.‡  I’ve barely been ringing handbells all summer.  Initially I had made a laudable attempt to cut back on how much handbell ringing I did, not least because it’s seriously brain-draining and I do need to reserve a few of my easily-tapped-out brains for other purposes:  earning a living, for example.  But cutting back on handbells went a bit wrong.  Colin kept frelling going on frelling holiday‡‡ and then Gemma kept going on holiday‡‡‡ and then, I don’t know, I lost the plot.  I had some ME days, I had various eruptions like Ms OTP, my dogminder quit/fired me, and the Street Pastor training was rather involving.

And then we rang handbells for that wedding on Saturday and I was thinking, eh, handbells, and I looked in my diary and there was a small timid handbells?, with a question mark after in this week’s diary for today.  Thursday is the Colin-and-Niall day:  Colin and Niall who can ring anything, or at least anything I’ve ever heard of.  So on Monday I texted Niall.  And for some reason he thought handbells on Thursday was a good idea.  And—even more amazing—Colin wasn’t on holiday.

I haven’t rung anything but frelling bob minor and some teaching-type methods in yonks and here was my opportunity.  I decided I had three options:  I could brush up on my St Clements, my Kent, or my Cambridge.§  I threw Cambridge out at once.  It’s way the hardest, although it’s also the one I’ve spent the most time trying to learn and I was nearly there when life started happening in a handbell-unfriendly way.  I was a little wistful about Cambridge but I was sure this was the right choice for starting up again.

That left St Clements, which is really only a bob minor variation§§, and Kent, which is kind of the gentle approach to Cambridge.§§§  It was going to be fine.  I half-knew them both already, I just had to drag that half-knowledge out of the shadows#, dust it off, and start sticking it to its other half.

Or halves.  And therein lies my TERRIBLE MISTAKE.  I didn’t look at them together.  I did not look at them in relation to each other—a method is a method;  it doesn’t matter what some other method is—and I therefore didn’t notice that the beginnings of these two methods are as if malignly meant to confuse the living doodah-whatsit out of you.  Can I explain this in a way a non-handbell-ringer will understand?##  Three people ring six bells.  Each row consists of all six bells ringing once each.  Each bell can move only one place from one row of six to the next row of six.  So if in row one you rang in thirds and fourths place, your third-place bell can ONLY ring in either second or fourths next row and your fourth-place bell can ONLY ring in either thirds or fifths.  Or stay in the same place, which is also permitted.

I’m ringing the trebles, the first pair, which are the easiest pair in most ordinary methods because the no.1 bell has the easiest path through the method, so when you start ringing touches where the pattern gets messed up by the conductor’s calls, only your second bell is affected.  The first bell toils on doing what it always does and never mind how explosive the other five may become.

The problem for me was the first frelling leads of Kent and St Clements are like the evil antipathetic twins of each other.  Like that extremely subtle Star Trek The Original episode where these two guys really hate each other because one of them is black down the right side and white down the left and the other one is black down the left side and white down the right.  Kent is a treble-bobbing method which means the treble has a different basic unaffected line through the diagram than St Clements does.  And furthermore bell no.2 in both methods hangs around the front for a long time before it heads out to the back, but in St Clements its location in the row goes: 1-2-1-2-1-2-1-2 and in Kent it goes 1-1-2-2-1-1-2-2-1-1-2-2.

Okay, you have no idea what I’m talking about.  Let me be succinct:  AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.

By the time Colin and Niall arrived this afternoon I couldn’t ring anything.

But by the end of the afternoon I was ringing little tiny, and perhaps somewhat lumpy, TOUCHES of St Clements.  We even essayed a small bit of spliced, which is where you change frelling METHODS in the middle of a touch, and we did not crash and burn, which is to say I did not crash and burn.

It was fun.

Whereupon Niall got his diary out and said, well, we can ring major [eight bells] tomorrow, because Gemma and Jillian are both available.

I can’t do tomorrow, I said.

Can we meet here again? said Niall, staring at his diary.

I told Gemma at tower practise on Wednesday that I couldn’t do this Friday, I said.

I’ll text her, said Niall.  We start at 5:30, okay?

I thought about it.  When I cut back on my handbells, I said I was going to ring only once a week.  If I rang Thursday, I wasn’t going to ring Friday.  This Friday . . . I was supposed to go to a dog show.  Southdowner is still trying to convince me that it would be fun to take the hellterror to some breed classes.###

But I can’t go because I don’t have a dogminder to cosset hellhounds in my absence.

Okay, I said.  Five-thirty.

Niall smiled.  Evilly.

* * *

* Occasionally there’s so frelling much of it I don’t get around to all of it.

** Not very nearly resembling order.  In fact not nearly at all.  Just slightly resembling order.

*** Very misleading, white space in the diary.

† First Street Pastors duty night in a fortnight.  Eeep.

†† Fewer hellcritters, say.  Oops^.

^ And we’re not even going to discuss bookshelves.

††† More sleep would be nice however.   Which is to say when I manage to be in bed with the lights out and my eyes shut I should be ASLEEP.

‡ Just had an email from Merrilee reminding me of something I’d promised for a fortnight ago.  Something on deadline.  AAAAAAAUGH.  I don’t even remember which catastrophe derailed this, I emailed to her.  I know, she replied.  That’s why I’m here.

‡‡ What did he think it was, summer?  What did he think he was, retired?

‡‡‡ Who did she think she is?  A woman with a big family she wants to spend time with?

§ They’re METHOD NAMES, okay?

§§ You know, like the Hammerklavier Sonata is only a variation of Chopsticks.

§§§ And a partridge in a pear tree is the gentle approach to sending your true love round the twist by day twelve.

# I have a serious word-usage problem any more, with a hellhound named Darkness and a book named SHADOWS.

## Let alone care.

### Probably closely related to the fun of destroying your brain with handbells.