Bell-ringing

 Following on from the New Year's post on Malcolm Guite and bell-ringing; this has brought back memories of childhood, when I used to live across from Saint Mary's Church in Leatherhead, south of London. The bells would give tempo to the week, of course Sunday being the great outburst of pealing. And the joyful bells of a wedding day. Living without it was unimaginable. It was as natural as the surrounding Surrey hills.

And memories of later life, of all my visits back to England to visit my mother and father. In their village in Northamptonshire, the peals can be heard from anywhere. 

This really is part of English life; our shared soundscape. Imagine how barren it would be without them, regardless of our religious faith, or lack of it. Apparently that is what it was like during the last War. Imposed silence. The sound of bells was reserved to warn the country of impending invasion. And in the end, they sounded victory. 

The particular form of 'change ringing' is a great, mathematical art, as Malcolm Guite says in his video. Here is an extract from the Encyclopedia Britannica on the subject:

Change ringing: traditional English art of ringing a set of tower bells in an intricate series of changes, or mathematical permutations (different orderings in the ringing sequence), by pulling ropes attached to bell wheels.(...) In ringing a peal, no bell moves more than one place forward or backward in the ringing order in each successive change, nor is it repeated or omitted, nor is any sequence (change) repeated.