[r-t] Anything Goes vs Peals Mean Something

[Mark Davies]

RAS writes, in response to me,

> The only difference is that with your definition, if you want to pick out
> isolated rows you have to come up with a contrived description in term of
> methods, whereas with Don's / Iain's you don't have to maintain this 
> fiction.

In theory, I suppose. But it's not really a fiction, is it: in theory people
can ring a peal of Cambridge using Original and lots of calls. In practice
no-one does. The intention - the spirit - of my idea is clear, and that's
what matters I think. Who cares if someone wants to exploit a loophole? Let
'em I guess - I suspect there will be one such peal, probably rung by the
CUG. :-)

> In practice, unless you've carefully constructed the triples to the
> contrary, the covering bell to the minor won't be at the back in all the
> missing rows of triples

Err, no... could be any covering bell in the Minor, couldn't it. You're not
always going to start the Minor method from a Triples row with the 7th at
home. (The leads or courses of Minor can be split up throughout the peal).

> MBD (and, I think, GACJ, but less so) seems to think it is more important
> to excluded the worthless things even at the expense of excluding other
> obscure but interesting things.

No, not at all. I think that we should set minimum standards for peal
ringing, that are high, but allow limitless innovation. Has anyone come up
with anything "obscure but interesting" that is outside of my standards? I
don't think so - Don has tried quite hard but I think has failed - I was
happy with all of his crazy peal examples.

However if someone did ring something outside of what I've tried to set out
(meaning it would either have to be too short, false, or have bells ringing
rounds throughout) that really was "obscure and interesting" enough then why
not consider it as an individual case? If I was the Central Council (all of
it) and something like this came up I'd probably vote to accept it as a
peal, but not bother changing the rules to accommodate it. Nothing like it
would probably ever be rung again.

MBD