Extra - The Numbers Game

Bellringing is all about numbers, and so are dates.  When the two come together, you may be sure, wonderful things can happen.

A bellringing method is a way of arranging all the possible combinations of a set (or ring) of bells so that each sequence (or change) occurs only once. When such a composition is achieved including more than 5,000 changes, it's called a Peal, takes about three hours to ring, and is usually performed to celebrate some special occasion ... even if the occasion is only the fact of the ringers having completed it!  Even so, their success is usually dedicated to a worthy purpose.  For arithmetic reasons (if you're really intrigued what they might be, just multiply together 7,6,5,4,3,2 and 1), a Peal is usually 5,040 changes; more often, a sufficient achievement to be worthy of note is recognised if 1,260 changes are rung ... termed, predictably, a 'Quarter Peal', or frequently simply 'a Quarter'.

So it was that, on 25th April 1993, I took part in a Quarter rung in honour of my father, at the church where he and my mother had been married, on the day that - notwithstanding the fact that he had died more than six years previously - he would have been twice my age.  Fast forward exactly ten years, during which a great deal happened in my life.  The most significant aspects, so far as this narrative is concerned, are that I had moved to my present home town in Hertfordshire, had joined a band of bellringers here, and had formed a deep friendship with a young lady ringer who had moved into the town a year or so later.  We had discovered that, on 25th April 2003, I would be twice her age and we decided that it would be fitting to attempt a quarter peal to mark the occasion.  Sadly some hitch occured and the attempt was unsuccessful.

This morning, here at our home tower, a quarter peal was successfully rung - which didn't involve me - for a similar celebration.  It commemorated the fact that today that young lady, now married and one of the 'young mums' of whom I wrote here a few weeks ago, is half the age of the wife of our tower captain, and both of them took part.  This afternoon, for the second time in two weeks, I was the first of our team to arrive at the church to ring for a wedding.  Because of the structure of the building, it's quite convenient, and sometimes useful, that we can sit in the ringing chamber and overlook what is going on in the body of the church.  As I watched the service for this couple I became enthralled and absorbed in what was taking place. Lawrence and Anna are a lovely couple, although completely unknown to me; they're clearly very positive people, very much in love, and Anna has a bouncy personality that shone through as she shared a joke with the vicar, who has been planning the wedding with them for a year and more.

When the other ringers arrived, just as the registers were being signed, it was as if I'd been watching a TV drama on my own, and the rest of the family entered the room at the height of the plot and broke the spell.  The service concluded and, with our concentration competing as ever with the sound of the organ below playing Mendelssohn's Wedding March, the bells rang forth in celebration.  As the ringing progressed, the organ ceased and the hubbub below died away, I found myself reviewing in my mind the events of the day.  I recalled another occasion when a quarter peal had been rung on the morning of a wedding ... my own.  Then I remembered the date; that would have been 23rd July, 1994.

As I said, a great deal had happened during that ten year period.  In addition to those I mentioned, I had got married, and had been divorced. Every time I ring at a wedding - and especially today - my prayer for the happy couple is simply that they will remember the happiness they share today, in the bad times as well as the good, and that their love will survive the test of time ... as mine did not.