I am very excited. I have just picked up a cardboard box from a doorstep. I do not know what is in the cardboard box and it feels like Christmas. I hope not to be disappointed. I am not expecting a Barbie doll or a Lego set, although there was a time when I would have loved either of those, but rather some memorabilia – specifically a lifetime's bell ringing memorabilia from someone who loved our local bells.
My son, when little, had a singular approach to presents. A Christmas stocking would take hours to unwrap because every item had to be minutely examined and then put to good use before moving on to the next prize. A novelty soap required a bath to be run, some socks necessitated getting dressed, a book must be read, an orange needed eating, a mouth organ would demand an immediate lesson on how to play it. Thus Christmas morning could be spent unwrapping little gifts one at a time and using them. No grab/unwrap/toss to one side for him.
I feel the same about the box. I want to savour the contents – examine each item carefully, decide where best to store it/donate it/sell it even. What treasures might be found within or is it just decades worth of Ringing Worlds, all dog eared and falling apart? I hope not.
The box was left out for me by a daughter who is clearing her parents' house following her dad's death. I only rang with him once, by which time he suffered from health issues, but he still insisted on jumping up on the beams from which our bells are hung to make sure that we were looking after them properly. I think he was 87 at the time and I am sure that we were not insured for such antics, but it meant a great deal to him that the tower where he had done so much work was ringing regularly. We passed the inspection. The bells were being cared for although we might like to keep an eye on the rope on the 3 bell because it looked worn (since replaced entirely). He had kindly left a box of new ropes in our ringing room some decades earlier which we are working our way through.
I have not fully penetrated the contents of the box yet, but top of the pile were his peal books. They deserve close reading because they are a wonderful history of ringing in Norfolk, Ely and Lincoln. Owen rang his first peal in 1946 at St Giles on the Hill, Norwich. I believe he cycled over from Ely for the event – 60 miles each way, which sounds exhausting. He was 16. He went on to ring nearly 200 further peals, despite living abroad for some decades. Modest by some standards, but each one is meticulously recorded - the reasons it was rung, the method, the band, the firsts etc. It forms a record of one man's ringing achievements, but also, alongside, the history of all the other individuals whom he rang with from men who rang with my great grandfather through to men and women whom I ring with regularly. The tentacles stretch back through 80 years and the link to the ghosts of past ringers is very real. I feel that I could turn up at the towers where he stood, take a rope and join in, if only I was a better ringer. The language that he spoke with the old gents is the same, the camaraderie identical.
I had not realised that he was an enthusiastic ringer of handbells. He rang his first handbell peal in 1946. Had I known, I might have turned up on his doorstep with a box of bells and offered a tinkle. Just because he became too frail for the tower, that does not mean he was too frail for my favourites.
Come to think of it, someone who regularly conducted handbell peals probably had his own set. I know that he did not rely on our tower set because they were melted to a blob in a fire at the church. In his records is a letter from the Whitechapel foundry offering 65p per lb for the scrap metal. A sad end for a set of handbells.
But if he did have his own set, where are they now? I only hope that his daughter recognises their worth and does not throw them in a skip. I wonder how many sets have ended up in a skip? I have a friend who once rescued a pair of Boosey and Hawkes vintage clarinets from a skip, and he could not play a note. He thought that the case looked useful.
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