rung out

This may look like just another Google Map to you, but every mus­cle in my body can assure you that it’s far more than that.  This lit­tle screen­shot of South­east Eng­land rep­re­sents the six vil­lages and six churches that I vis­ited on Sat­ur­day, spend­ing about an hour at each one, ring­ing bells with my equally-crazy bell­ring­ing friends.  Sim­ply a per­fectly Eng­lish way to spend a cold, clear, frosty Jan­u­ary day.  I’ll take you on a tour.

The place-names will tell you straight­away that you’re not in Indi­ana any­more.  We began in Hare­field St Mary’s, Mid­dle­sex, with the win­ter sun low on the horizon.

We gath­ered in the church­yard, exchanged hushed greet­ings, some ringers sip­ping cof­fee or tea from ther­moses they had brought against the chill of the morning.

The church itself was very cold, with that par­tic­u­lar chill an empty, ancient stone build­ing can con­tain.  But it was filled with flow­ers from a recent funeral, and their fra­grance filled the air and lit up the extrav­a­gant altar with color, pro­vid­ing a lively con­trast with the carved, mar­ble Eiz­a­bethan death monuments.

It was a beau­ti­ful place to ring, with six light and easy bells, befit­ting the first ring of the day.  The ringers came from all over: our own dear St Mary’s Barnes, and Chiswick, and sev­eral ringers from Rich­mond and Ful­ham and one or two from the host church.  We ran the gamut of skill: me at the bot­tom really, then our three teenage girls who formed a gig­gling gag­gle all day, then the seri­ous ringers who have been at it for many, many years.

I’ll explain a tiny bit about what we do.  First we ring what are called “rounds,” in order from the high­est sound (the light­est bell) down the num­bers to the low­est sound (the heav­i­est bell), “la-la-la-la-la-la.”  It’s sur­pris­ingly dif­fi­cult to do, to be every sin­gle time fourth — for exam­ple — in order, every SIN­GLE time.  A frac­tion of  a sec­ond early and you CLANG onto the sound of the bell before you.  A frac­tion of a sec­ond late and the bell after you CLANGS onto your sound.  Every sin­gle time you pull the bell you have a fresh chance to get it right, which makes it a very sat­is­fy­ing, instant result.  No delayed grat­i­fi­ca­tion nec­es­sary!  But every mis­take is intensely pub­lic and pointed to YOU.

Then once we’ve estab­lish good con­sis­tent rounds, some­one (the per­son called the con­duc­tor) begins to “call changes.”  That is, he or she shouts, “Four to five,” and you on the fourth bell switch places with the fifth.  The fifth fol­lows the third and you take fifth’s place.  The you have to pay close atten­tion to what the con­duc­tor tells you to do next, but ALSO what he tells the fifth to do, since you’re fol­low­ing him!  I find it incred­i­bly chal­leng­ing, but every­one tells me that even­tu­ally, fol­low­ing the direc­tions becomes easy.  The rules of change-ringing (as it’s called, when you begin to change places) means no bell can move more than one spot at a time.  Also, the bells must be con­ducted back into “rounds” before we can be told to “stand,” which means to stop ring­ing.  I can­not imag­ine being the con­duc­tor and keep­ing it all in my head!

The more advanced ringers ring what are called “Meth­ods”, where the “changes” have been made into pat­terns and mem­o­rized, with names like “Cam­bridge Sur­prise Minor” or “Kent Tre­ble Bob Major.”  I truly can­not imag­ine ever man­ag­ing to mem­o­rize a method.  But it could hap­pen.  Never say die!

We moved through the grave­yard, solemnly pay­ing homage to the beau­ti­ful and touch­ing ash memo­ri­als in the ancient wall.

From Hare­field we trav­elled to the most beau­ti­ful church I have ever seen, called Chal­font St Giles.

This church is located in the area called, as you might imag­ine, “The Chal­fonts.”  These lit­tle vil­lages, with “The Ruis­lips” and “The Slaugh­ters” and “The Riss­ing­tons” make up what one of my favorite mys­tery authors calls “guests at a din­ner party.”  As in, “I’ve invited the Chal­fonts, but they can’t come, so I’ll ask the Ruis­lips instead.”

Chal­font St Giles was warm and cozy, over­looked by Cromwell and there­fore still dec­o­rated with 14th-century reli­gious paintings.

We rang St Giles’s eight bells, mar­vel­ling at how dif­fer­ent they all felt from Harefield.

I wan­dered around the ring­ing cham­ber read­ing what are called “peal boards,” which list the con­duc­tor and ringers who have gath­ered in the past to ring a suc­cess­ful “method,” which usu­ally takes about three hours.  Our host pointed out to me Mr J.D. Shanklin.  “This chap found time between ring­ing peals to dis­cover the hole in the ozone layer.”

After our ring, the more hardy among us climbed the extremely steep and ancient bell­tower stairs to see the orig­i­nal tim­ber fit­tings hold­ing up the bells.  Six hun­dred years old.

Even more touch­ing, more per­sonal, and more stun­ning to me than the tim­ber itself, was this object, the orig­i­nal lad­der lead­ing to the bells.  Look­ing at this lad­der brings vividly to my mind the thou­sands of feet that climbed them from time immemo­r­ial, tak­ing an hour or two out of their busy medieval, Renais­sance, Eliz­a­bethan, Vic­to­rian, 21st cen­tury lives to care for the bells of St Giles.

From St Giles we went to Chal­font St Peter, a heav­ier ring of eight bells the heav­i­est of which weighed about 1000 pounds.  Here the peal boards seemed to me the ulti­mate in Eng­lish­ness.  The names!  New­ton, Thack­eray, Whit­ting­ton.  And a trib­ute to Mr E George Swift, who rang until he was 92 and then asked that a peal be rung on his birth­day every year until he would have turned 100.

From St Peter we drove to the gor­geous, impos­si­bly mag­i­cal vil­lage of Den­ham in Buck­ing­hamshire, home to many tele­vi­sion dra­mas.  You can see why.

How beau­ti­ful that house must be in the spring, when the vines are heavy with flow­ers.  And this house!  Can you imag­ine liv­ing in such a picture-perfect place?  It would make you behave dif­fer­ently, break­ing into atro­cious blank verse at the drop of a hat, wear­ing ruffs around your neck.

We had a lovely lunch in the Green Man pub — fil­let of sea bream with a rich root veg­etable dauphi­noise and pick­led fen­nel, deli­cious — and then walked through the vil­lage to St Mary’s, to ring their lovely HEAVY eight bells — the tenor (the heav­i­est and there­fore low­est note) weigh­ing just over a TON.  I can assure I didn’t ring it!  But I did ring the num­ber 6 which weighed a half ton.

From there we headed to the only ten-bell church on our agenda, at Rick­mansworth, in Hertfordshire.

The sound of 10 bells being rung in rounds, once we got it per­fectly timed, was sim­ply majes­tic.  Here is a record­ing (don’t click the link if you’re sit­ting next to a sleep­ing baby or mate!) of 10 bells, ring­ing partly in rounds and partly in a method.  I think it could be a love-hate thing.  Some neigh­bors liv­ing near to churches with bells think they’re in heaven, oth­ers get sim­ply gaga at the sound every week.

We fin­ished our day at Pin­ner, just out­side Lon­don, in a lovely lit­tle crowded 8-bell cham­ber over­look­ing the nave of the church.  The organ­ist down below prac­ticed doggedly through­out our ring­ing!  The wheel that holds all the ropes — these with beau­ti­ful blue “Sal­lies” — is called a “spi­der” and is wafted into the air, high above the cham­ber, when the bells are at rest.

By this time we were all tired, cold and get­ting a bit cranky, with the con­duc­tors get­ting slightly scratchy at bad rounds or impre­cise call changes.  It was time to go home, at least for the teenagers and me, and our teachers.

We emerged in the cold twi­light feel­ing a tremen­dous sense of achieve­ment, rub­bing our sore and blis­tered hands together, chat­ter­ing about our favorite churches, the idio­syn­cra­cies of the bells, our goals and hopes and fail­ures and embar­rass­ments of the day.  We turned around in the vil­lage street to see Pin­ner St John the Bap­tist ris­ing on the hill­side in the dark.

What a com­pletely mad, bonkers, insane way to spend a day!  Thank good­ness for a good din­ner at home: John had piled tons of extra top­pings — pep­pers, mush­rooms, grilled hal­loumi cheese, Parma ham — onto ready­made piz­zas and had steamed arti­chokes.  Heaven!

So that was my ring­ing adven­ture, our “Win­ter Out­ing.”  I will miss the “Sum­mer Out­ing” when we’re at Red Gate Farm, but I’ll be in charge of orga­niz­ing it because.… drum roll… I’ve been cho­sen as the new Tower Sec­re­tary for St Mary’s Barnes!  I am very excited.  Lots of admin, lots of email, and lots of ringing.

And of course Sun­day morn­ing found me up bright and early stretch­ing tired mus­cles to ring for ser­vices at Barnes and Chiswick, feel­ing a bit mar­tyred but quite proud.  I can­not remem­ber the last time in my life that I set a very dif­fi­cult task, per­se­vered and actu­ally achieved my goal.  It’s a rare enough feel­ing once we’re past school-age, and one to be savored, what­ever the cost.

My reward for all this work was to invent some­thing Avery had for lunch at school, and came home sim­ply rav­ing about.  “Have you ever had Paris But­ter, Mummy?  It’s HEAV­ENLY!”  It was but the work of a moment to google it and find many diver­gent recipes.  The one that worked for us, melted onto grilled fil­let steaks, was this:

Paris But­ter

(makes a large banana-sized roll, keeps for up to 3 months in foil in the freezer)

250g/1 cup butter

1 tbsp each: gar­lic, shal­lots, cor­ni­chons, capers, fresh tar­ragon, fresh thyme, fresh dill, fresh chives, freshrose­mary, tomato paste, lemon zest, pine nuts, anchovy, brandy, madeira

1 tsp Dijon mustard

1 pinch each: curry pow­der, cayenne pep­per, paprika

juice of 1/2 lemon

Sim­ply throw every­thing into a food proces­sor or blender and mix until com­pletely smooth.  Roll in foil in a cylin­der shape and freeze.  Cut off one coin-shaped piece for each steak.

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Duty calls now.  Avery is home ill and list­less with a cold, so chicken soup is in order.  Then I’ll sit back, watch my blis­ters heal­ing, and enjoy the mem­o­ries of a mag­i­cal day out in my adopted land.  What an adven­ture it was.