Sliced and Diced

A couple of weeks ago, I gave you a brief introduction to one of my longest-standing hobbies, bell-ringing (not - as I delight in correcting people who clearly like to appear better informed than they actually are - 'campanology', which is the study of bells, not specifically their ringing.  While there is a great overlap between the two, not all ringers are campanologists, and not all campanologists are ringers <climbs down from soapbox>).

Today, the lesson continues.  Most ringing methods consist of each bell following the same path among the others in turn, and that path can be broken down into 'places', a place being the section that any one bell covers before another one begins the part where the first one began.  Many beginners (myself included, many years ago) tend to learn the path from start to finish as one single pattern, ignoring these divisions.  Hence, without some re-learning, they then find it difficult to ring a method that they have already learned if they are asked to ring it on a different bell.  It's like describing the road from London to Glasgow, with which you may be familiar, if you're asked to start from Leeds; <thinks> it's actually more difficult, because you would probably have a pretty good idea where Leeds was anyway!

In the almost infinite collection of methods, there are families in which one method is the parent, or basic pattern, and others, while accorded their own identity, are actually derivatives of that parent method.  Fairly early in my ringing career, I learned a method called Cambridge Surprise. If it's rung on six bells, then there are five 'places' in the basic pattern (because the sixth bell, the smallest one, follows a different pattern, like a piece of string that holds all the others together).  Some years after becoming familiar with Cambridge Surprise, I underwent a very confusing introduction to two others called Primrose and Ipswich.

These two are both based on the pattern I knew but somehow, while understanding the principle, I could never get to grips with them while holding the bell-rope in my hand.  In Primrose, those five 'places' are exactly the same as in Cambridge, but occur in a different sequence, while in Ipswich, each of them is split in half and all the halves are matched together in different pairs.  This confusion very quickly got the name - in my vocabulary, at least - of Sliced and Diced Cambridge ... hence the heading for this week's blog.

That's just how this week has felt.  When I first retired, I quickly adopted a fairly rigid pattern to my week.  Tuesday, for example, was when I learned Welsh; Wednesday was shopping, Thursday was cooking, and Friday was washing.  Gradually, some of these got adjusted for a variety of reasons and others ceased to occur every week, but there has still been a fairly consistent pattern to life.  It only needs a couple of big interruptions, however, to upset the whole pattern completely.

You already know about the genealogy course which takes up most of Mondays at the moment, so I won't go on about that.  This week was further invaded by a trip on Wednesday to get the fresh water pump on the motorhome replaced, and then yesterday was completely devoted to Health & Safety.  In the morning came a meeting with the churchwardens to discuss a number of matters, including revisions I have proposed to our official policy document, in order to make the standards that we are aiming to achieve a little more clear and consistent.  Then in the afternoon I carried out my official inspection of the premises, and was accompanied by the churchwarden who was newly appointed earlier in the year, so she could see what is and what is not included in this exercise.

The effect on my week felt devastating ... although looking back from here, it clearly wasn't, because all the essential tasks were completed, just not in the same slots in my calendar.  I've had to learn flexibility, something that is no bad challenge at any age!  So, washing migrated to Tuesday, partly as a hangover from the fact of being away for a week in Worcestershire last month, shopping drifted to Thursday morning and cooking was abandoned as a separate exercise.  I can live out of the freezer for a week with no undue hardship.

One evening, I noticed on my shelf the timetable for the major football competitions for the 2016-17 season, and realised that this weekend sees the start of the FA Cup.  I quickly scoured the local fixtures to see which match I would go and watch.  I decided upon Godmanchester, where the visiting team is Great Yarmouth.  Then came the coup de grace of my week in the form of two e-mails reminding me that I shall be ringing for two weddings this afternoon, and that we are hosting a district ringing practice in the evening.  Football may not be wicked, but there's definitely no rest this week!