St Peter
Saturday, 5 May 2001 (3–3–20 in E♭)
1288 Grandsire Triples
Composed by R William Willans
1 R William Willans
2 Zena Woodley
3 Morag Todd
4 Christine Northeast
5 Mark Ingledew
6 Mike Todd
7 Roger G Booth (C)
8 Richard Wood
Another Tale of Obsession, and yet More Christmas Cake!
If at first you don’t succeed....
The morning of 5th of May dawned bright and clear. Again, the Rotherhithe ringers foregathered: would the 3rd attempt to get the first peal on the bells be successful?
Alas, no. Nerves got the better of us; and our conductor wisely called stand before an hour had passed. There’s little point in post-mortems or recriminations; instead we enjoyed the unusualsensation of warm sun in the park, while waiting for the pub to open!.
Some background here: we are determined that the first peal on the bells will be rung by a local band. After consultation with the vicar, we are limiting any future peal attempts by visitors to Saturdays only, mornings or afternoons, maximum of one per month, first come – first served. Please DON’T apply for peals until you read – by whatever medium – that we have attained our goal! And should any visitors wish to ring quarter peals, then it’s Monday to Saturday only, with a finish time of 8pm.
Visitors are, however, always welcome to join us at our practice. This is on Monday evenings (Bank Holidays excepted), from 7.30-9pm. The church is set very close to local housing and, while the natives are friendly, we don’t want to impose upon them. The sound control is not yet fully functional!. I hope that everyone will understand our reasoning.
Back to our failed peal attempt. We were joined in The Mayflower by Will Willans, who had come up to town for the day. And who should walk in but Christine Northeast, researching venues for a future day out – and Roger had A Plan!
Thus eight assembled ringers found themselves, an hour later, at Walworth. 37 minutes later, Christine’s comment of ‘I’ve waited 30 years to ring here’, and Will’s comment – A long time since I’ve rung The Tune on the treble’ left the rest of us with a positive sensation of salvaging a strand of success from the sleeve of disaster.
Oh, and the Christmas cake? Well, it’s still going (it’s only May, after all!), and William enjoyed an enormous slice for tea. Like Arnie, he promises to return!.
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