[Bell Historians] Glastonbury

[Chris Pickford]

charset="iso-8859-1"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

Surely it's a big mistake to assume that heavy means difficult to ring? It=
's about familiarity and expectations. When we did some training sessions =
at the Swan Tower at Perth in 2001, we were able to help dispel the fear of=
ringing big bells - and the back bells are now rung by males and females, =
young and old, who just treat it as "normal".

Okay, I'm built like a tank and I like lugging big bells around - and the h=
arder they are, the better, as there's a very real satisfaction at getting =
good ringing on difficult bells on any number. But beyond that, it's the so=
und of heavy bells that inspires me to maintain a keen interest in ringing.=
I'd feel very differently about ringing, I think, if all our bells were of=
lesser weight and easy going.

But back to my starting point, there are plenty of heavy bells that go perf=
ectly well and it's plain silly of ringers to be afraid of them on the grou=
nds of weight alone. Moreover, weight of bells shouldn't be a deterrent to =
sustaining local bands. Regarding this as a cause strikes me as a pretty th=
in excuse for the more complex phenomenon of the decline of ringing in some=
towers.

CP
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.ringingworld.co.uk/pipermail/bell-historians/attachments/20030319/20cab181/attachment.html>