At the risk of cancellation, social suicide and possible death threats, I have dared to use the f-word, but I am not referring to a lady (oops – no, not allowed " a person with a cervix" perhaps?). I am referring to the non-gender specific fluffy bit of a bell rope. People are currently chatting about girth and I feel they are rather late to the party because I have been moaning about fat sallies since lockdown.
The tower where I mostly ring replaced their ropes during lockdown. I remember a pleasant Sunday ring coffee prior to March 2020 where we discussed colours and decided on our new livery – purple, green and white twist. At no point was fatness mentioned. The ropes arrived and were hung in a socially distanced manner ready for our return to the tower. It took a while, but eventually we were back, eager to start up where we had left off, but for me there was disappointment and one reason I believe was that the sallies were fatter than I was accustomed to. The ropes were OK – but the fluffy bit was not. I tried to catch them in the way that I vaguely remember I used to catch them but my hands slipped and slithered on the plush. This was alarming so I went for the grab, but panicked grabs create all sorts of other problems and my handling deteriorated. I sally-slid whereas that was never one of my particular faults; I caught too late and in the wrong place: I threw the rope around and generally mishandled. It was hateful and I began to hate the physical act of ringing, particularly at that tower. I lost my nerve, tried to rebuild it, lost it again etc.
Looking back, the little pebble rolling down the mountain that caused the avalanche was nothing more than a fat sally. It all started with an over-plump sally, which is ridiculous but the smallest of things can destabilise someone when they are ripe for de-stabilisation. They say that "A bad workman blames his tools" but these little aphorisms usually have some basis in fact. If you are not very skilled at opening cans and are given an unfamiliar tin opener, you are more likely to cut your finger.
.Ladies in particular are currently fessing up to the fact that many of us hate a fat sally. It has been questioned whether, because bell ropes were the tools of gentlemen for generations, that has set the standard for a comfortable fit - a fit that may not suit children and ladies with smaller hands. It is a shocking fact that crash dummies – those mechanical surrogates of the human body used to assess the effectiveness of seat belts and safety features in vehicle design, are based on the average male build and weight. Women make up nearly half of all drivers and we are 3X more likely to suffer whiplash from a rear-end shunt as a man. Like-for-like accidents result in more injuries for women. Perhaps, because the dummies are not representative of the average woman, the resulting injuries differ because the safety features fail to protect us to the same extent. We tend to be smaller, weigh less and may have sticky out bits that the crash dummies lack.
Last year a team of Swedish engineers finally developed the first dummy – or "seat evaluation tool" as they prefer to be called, based on the body of the average woman (162 cm tall, 62kg weight). We shall see if it makes a difference to our injury rates.
Now I am thinking perhaps sallies need the same treatment. For 50 years we ladies have put up with less rigorous safety features in vehicles. Do we also have to put up with over-generous sallies? Perhaps a choice in any ring would be the solution – half fat and half thin and those individuals that actively prefer one size can choose. Experienced ringers are likely to scoff and say "Ring what you get. They are all the same" but I have a suspicion that the scoffers are individuals who are more likely to weigh more and enjoy larger hands than I do so are not even aware of the technical difficulty of grasping something that seems determined to slither through your hands unless you squeeze with some force.
My all-time favourite sally is a disgrace of a sally – a veritable rat's tail of a sally, but it is soft and skinny and fits neatly in my little paw. Shame about the bell that it is attached to…..
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