Apologies. Here Be More Chirping.

 

PEG II is (still) going well* and I'm still tediously chirpy about my new voice teacher** and I'VE JUST BEEN RINGING THE 5-6 TO BOB MAJOR ON HANDBELLS YAAAAAAAAY.  It's both a good and a bad thing that you begin to pick up the Essential Pattern of the method—in this case plain bob major—sort of through your particular pair of bells as through a glass darkly.  How people learn handbell methods varies, possibly more so than how people learn the same methods on tower bells, because of the two bells aspect;  I learn based on the relationship between the two bells*** and the shape the two lines make—more in my head than on the page, but it has to start on the page.  But before you start learning a specific pair of bells you learn the entire method as a single line, on or in which each bell starts at a different place.†  This means that the 'shapes' your pair of bells are making tend to come up in a different order and different relationships to each other on different pairs of bells.  YES, THIS IS VERY CONFUSING.  And it means you're happily dubbing along on (say) the 1-2 and suddenly find yourself sliding inadvertently into the 3-4's place(s) because it looks too comfy and familiar.  And I apologize for chirping protractedly two days in a row, but the endorphin high from singing†† is a lot different from the endorphin high from ringing handbells.  Singing . . . I got into this because I like writing songs, and then started wondering if it might eventually be a way of doing music with other people (I'm carefully avoiding the verb 'perform').  But I'm never going to be any more than back row of the chorus, I just may be a somewhat louder and more expansive back row than I hitherto had imagined. 

            With the handbells . . . Lots of people sing.  It's quite a reasonable thing to do.  'Oh I sing in the choir' is not a conversation-killer.  Method ringing on handbells is a small crabbed cult of weirdos just going in.  Ringing tower bells is crabbed and weird enough:  handbells are a sort of boiled-down essence of total weirdness.†††  'Oh I ring methods on handbells' is a conversation-killer because no one has the faintest idea what you're talking about . . . and an uneasy sensation they don't want to. 

             One of the reasons method handbell ringing is so small and crabbed a cult is because learning the frelling methods on handbells is so FRELLING DIFFICULT.  We're all out of our minds.  What minds we once had, before we discovered method ringing on handbells.   And I have been resigned to hanging on to the cult's trailing hem with my fingernails.‡  If I don't have the right shape of brain to learn methods for tower ringing I doubly—or rather quadruply or possibly octagonally, since geometry is one of the many things that is bent in anti-Einsteinian directions by the dangerous radiation caused by the presence of handbells—don't have it for learning methods on handbells.

            And then Pooka happened—and a method-ringing ap for iPhones:  my secret weapon.  And I am no longer the least of handbell ringers.  The least of handbell ringers couldn't possibly ring all four pairs to bob major.  I'm almost . . . the middle row of the chorus, in handbell ringing.

           At the moment however we're still only ringing plain courses.  This won't last.   It's all going to go astronomically pear-shaped as soon as Niall can't restrain himself any longer and starts calling bobs and singles. ‡‡  

* * *

* The problem with more words on more pages is the eternal prospect of REWRITING the more words on more pages.  Back in typewriter days I used to get to the end of the third draft and say THAT'S IT.  WHATEVER IS WRONG WITH IT CAN JUST STAY WRONG.^  In these sleek clicky computer days you don't get to say 'my fingers are bleeding'. 

^ Barring little things like that it's drivel. 

** I think I didn't tell you that Oisin^ had spoken to her after my first lesson and since I'd told her I got her name from him she mentioned me—and that she was feeling a bit guilty because originally she'd said over the phone that we'd have a nice 'chat' and 'ease' into the singing bit . . . when in fact I got there and she was like, right, sing this.  What music have you brought?  Right.  Sing that.  —I'd forgotten.  She had said we'd ease into it.  But she'd had one of her A-levels students before me and was obviously in full headmistress mode.  I didn't quite say 'Yes, ma'am,' 'No, ma'am,' but I was feeling it.  And I came home and have been singing like crazy, so it's all good.  And yesterday was thrilling.^^  Now if only we could do something about her brother.  Although the duet thing is growing on me.   Hey, he could join the New Arcadia Singers.^^^

^ Speaking of whom, there's a rumbling and a murmuring on the forum concerning the long-deferred Oisin Blog Post(s).  I couldn't agree more.  However—let the poor man survive the Octopus this week . . . and then we'll get him.+ 

           I suggest that—Sunday or something—I will have a line in that night's blog that WE ARE NOW ORGANISING AN OISIN-BLOG-POST PROTEST.  Everyone who wishes to be involved can post something to the forum . . . which I will then sweep up and send him. 

           If you're hearty and graphic (not too graphic:  under that testy exterior he's a nice boy) enough I might even get a BLOG POST out of it.  

+ All Gahan Wilson resonances here are valid. 

^^ I should try to find Blondel and tell him that he wrought better than he could have guessed.  I had no idea that I'd blow into Nadia's studio—AKA her mum's dining room, with piano—open my mouth, and sing.   I will go to my grave remembering that day in Blondel's little music room—probably about a year ago—when I'd been learning He Was Despised from MESSIAH.  But at home alone learning the tune by picking it out with one finger on the piano I hadn't registered that place in the middle when the accompaniment falls silent and you have to come in all by yourself.  This happens constantly in vocal music, of course—or any kind of music with solos—but it was the first time it had happened to me.  There are a couple of these naked ratbag entries in Che Faro.  But I'm all old and blasé about it now.  That day with Blondel . . . I couldn't do it.  Eeep.  Uggggh.

^^^ Let me say that the very idea of Wild Robert singing duets makes me totally fall down laughing.  Which, barring the Monday Afternoon Peal option, is possibly my best answer to Another Person in the House.  Laughter is a lot less work than organising peals.  

*** How feminine of me.

† Which is why everybody I frelling ring handbells with has an enormous advantage on me, because I don't ring bob major in the tower.   Experienced ringers will say off-handedly, oh, all the plain bob methods are alike.  You just keep adding the same piece of work, over and over, to the back end:  so first you ring it on five bells, then six, then seven, then eight . . . however many you have (and have the brain to keep track of).  And from a perspective of being able to ring Thirty-six Spliced Pantechnicon Twiddle Supreme Maximus, it probably is all the same method.  Down here among the rank and file it is not all the same method.

†† Which may only be lack of oxygen to the brain, although she does keep reminding you to breathe.

††† Hi there, multi-handbell-peal ringers who may be reading this.  Nice to meet you.

‡ If ungleblarging Niall hadn't been so desperate for handbell ringers a few years ago.  And it's totally too late now.

‡‡ PS:  I should have brought my knitting.  Over our tea break the boys got into an incredibly boring conversation about central heating alternatives.  AAAAUGH.   I was ready to start plaiting the contents of the kindling basket.