[r-t] What was I trying to achieve?

[Don Morrison]

David Hull wrote:
> b) it is unfamiliar and is the cause of lots of trips!).

In fact, that's almost certainly a causal relationship. Which might argue for 
ringing more such methods, so they become more familiar, and their virtues can 
then be exploited more freely in the future.

It's likely a cognate of many other things that were unfamiliar but are now 
commonplace. I suspect when people first rang singles in surprise they were a 
source of trips or confusion. I'm guessing in the first half of the twentieth 
century anything Bristol above was considered a bit scary and unsettling, but 
now such a back work is probably considered familiar and comforting by most 
folks that ring new methods. It's well out of my own league, but I suspect there 
are ringers for whom the Orion backwork is considered familiar and comforting, 
which certainly wasn't the case when it was first rung.

Not that such an argument is likely to winning any converts. We are a remarkably 
conservative lot.


-- 
Don Morrison <dfm at ringing.org>
"Thanks for trying to try to remember to help."
           -- Mike Schulte, personal communication