Ringers have been asked to ring today to mark 70 years of Her Majesty's reign. Her father died on 6th February 1952 at Sandringham in Norfolk and thus she became queen at the tender age of 25. What a nightmare for her.  I am sure she was anticipating more years of being a young wife, accompanying her husband to naval postings around the world and raising their family, yet she was catapulted into one of the most demanding and relentless jobs in the world – to be queen of a nation still emerging battered from a brutal war and standing on the cusp of a new era, where colonialism would be challenged and it would be necessary to forge a new relationship with countries which had previously been under British control. Not your ideal job description. New duties would have to take precedence over family life

70 years is a great achievement and makes her the longest reigning monarch in British history, beating her great great grandmother, Queen Victoria, by nearly 6 years and still counting. But of course her accession was only made possible by the death of her father, so alongside the celebration one must also remember the death of a monarch.  For the Queen, 6th February marks the anniversary of her father's death, and I suspect that this will be uppermost in her mind, rather than her own accession.

Yet we have been asked to ring in celebration and I am sure that all towers that can will oblige because however ardent a republican one might be, few people bear ill-will towards an elderly lady who has done her utmost to fulfil the promise that she made on her 21st birthday when she "declare(d)  before you all that my whole life, whether it be long or short, shall be devoted to your service." She has kept that promise and if there is a curmudgeon out there who declines to ring in her honour, then more fool him/her because it is the sort of occasion that will be memorable and should give meaning as to why we bother to practise week after week in often freezing/sweltering towers.

A ringer from Ipswich was interviewed on Radio 4 on Saturday – recalling how he rang on accession day in 1952. He was called from class and directed up the tower to ring "whole pull and stand" once every minute 73 times – once for each year of George VI's relatively short life, and once for each year of his reign. Another band member, who happened to be the local police superintendent, sat and counted.  He did not admit to how many "stands" he missed on the first attempt – perhaps none.

I was grateful for the story because when the day comes that we must ring for the accession of the next monarch, we will also have to ring to mark the death of the reigning monarch. I had thought perhaps that we would be expected to toll one stroke every minute for each year of her life, and the thought of all those backstroke stands, or rather pulling off all those backstroke stands, was alarming.  Whole pull and stands are much more manageable and given the number required we could play team tag and take turns.

Expect to hear bells ring out from every ringing tower across the UK and the Commonwealth today.  They are ringing to mark 70 years of service. At our tower we shall call from Rounds to Queens ( a musical pattern when the bells ring 135246 instead of 123456) and back and forward and back for as long as we can manage.

I hope we all stand at the same time when I call a halt, but if we don't we don't and that is OK because at least we rang something, and a few years back our tower may have not been in a position to ring anything at all.