It began on a Wednesday. It seemed like a regular day with only the respectable addictions. Lager for me, Merlot for her. We were sitting in the garden of our new home in Winchester. There was no one else in our relationship. Behind me lay the hunted plains of toil, adventure and kids cross-bred with epicurean gannets. Life was as sound as a bell. I had control.

The city centre breeze blended roses with the alluring spices of Kathmandu and Naples. And there in the twilight faded the last moment of the life I’d known. We are all feeble denizens of a universe made ever more mysterious by knowledge. Fate calls all the changes. I was a lucky one. Few people survive an unexpected collision with a cathedral. Like I said, it was a Wednesday. It was ringing practice night. Without even a polite excuse-me there was a third person in our life. Stedman he called himself but back then he was just some unknown tenor. She drained the Merlot. She was never the same again.

In those last innocent moments we shared the comradeship of equality in ignorance. To me the mushy pea is greater than the pod. To her the perfect pod demands perfectly spaced peas. Obsession is both the joy and the curse of those who uncover or stumble upon their true desires. Whilst I swam as an early Christian fish, free in the ocean of lager and the mortal spirit, she was already detecting scales. I imagined other souls in that living moment of the city briefly enfolded in a communal cloak of history flaunted by the present. She was writing an e-mail.

They invited her to the tower. Like I said, it was a Wednesday.  I held her hand all the way there.  A heavy door creaked open. Inside the steps looked worn and medieval. I looked up at the stern stone walls of Norman dominance. She was gone. I headed for the chippy.

That is how it all began. The outside story has led me to the flowering meadows of summer days and to bleak car parks in biblical floods. My outside story of the world of bells has howling dogs, awe struck tourists, snatches of conversation, processions of clamouring clergy and a desperation of songbirds fighting for audience. Beyond the tower, the peal of bells is a perpetual rebirth of the ephemeral, reaching out to the human craving for permanence. Forget insider dealing. Outside information is the real story. To be continued. 

Bob Lakin, Winchester Bell-Widower

Mini tours success for our new ringers
As a novice (starting ringing in January 2023) I quickly discovered that our local towers often helped each other out if they were short of ringers for services.  The more experienced members of bands had plenty of experience of this, so were familiar with many of the other towers and their bells.  To help broaden our experience, Micki Nadal and Clare Thompson (of Stockbridge and Kings Somborne respectively) came up with a plan to invite those attending local ringing practices to take part in ‘Tower Tours’, which were held on 2 mornings in early July.

Our first tour, on 7^th July, began at 9:30 at Stockbridge, moving on to Longstock and then Houghton, with about an hour at each tower.  On 13^th July we started at Leckford at 9:30, moving on to Kings Somborne, then Crawley.  Approximately 10 ringers took part on each day, and Edmund Wratten kindly directed both tours, with his usual unflappable expertise and good humour.

There was a range of abilities amongst the participating ringers, and plenty of opportunity for everyone to get involved in ringing up/down, call changes and methods.  The drives between towers were relatively short, and balanced the ringing time well. 

I’m a relative newcomer to the both the local area and bell ringing and found both tours extremely useful and enjoyable.  It was very interesting to see the very varied countryside settings of each tower; challenging to adapt to the different bell handling needed at each one, and good to have the opportunity to meet and chat with other ringers, which isn’t always possible at shorter evening practices.

My thanks to Micki and Clare for conceiving and arranging such successful tours, and to Edmund for making them so productive and enjoyable.

Rod Francis, Crawley