Bell Ringers

There are eight bells in the tower at St Ida's and the tenor weighs about a ton.

You do not play them. That is the first thing and it is the thing that nobody outside understands: change ringing is not tunes. There is no melody and there never has been. What there is, is eight bells rung in order, and then rung again in a different order, and again in a different order, according to a system, until every possible order has been rung exactly once.

For eight bells the number of possible orders is forty thousand three hundred and twenty.

A full peal on eight bells takes about three hours.

The band

Eight, currently, which is the minimum and is a source of low-level anxiety.

Bernard, seventy-eight, tower captain, ringing since 1961.

Anwen, sixty-two, who rings the tenor because she is the only one who can, and who does not permit discussion of this.

Terry and Pauline, married, who have rung together since 1988 and who do not speak to each other in the tower at all.

Kofi, forty-one, six years in, the best natural ringer Bernard has ever taught and the one most likely to move away.

Shona, thirty-three.

Mo, nineteen, learning, two years in.

And Fenwick, eighty-four, who cannot manage the practice night any more but who comes for Sunday service ringing and rings the treble, which is the lightest bell, which everyone has agreed without ever saying so is now Fenwick's bell.

What it is like

Physically it is not difficult once you can do it and it is nearly impossible before that. There is a knack involving rope, timing, and a wheel, and it takes about six months to acquire and cannot be explained, only acquired.

Mentally it is the hardest thing most of them do.

You are holding a sequence in your head. Your bell moves one position each change, according to the method, and you must know where you are at all times, and there is no sheet music and there is no conductor beating time and there is no stopping.

If you lose your place you cannot busk it. Everybody hears immediately.

The three hours

A full peal is forty thousand three hundred and twenty changes and takes about three hours and eight people must all be correct for the entire time.

Nobody may stop. Nobody may swap out. Nobody may sit down. There is no interval and there is nothing to drink.

If one person makes a mistake that cannot be corrected, the peal is lost, and three hours becomes nothing, and you write it in the book as lost and you go home.

St Ida's has attempted eleven peals since 2009 and completed four.

On why

Bernard has been asked by four hundred people over sixty years and his answer has not changed and is not satisfying.

He says: "It's the only thing I do where I'm not thinking about anything else."

Kofi's answer is better and he gave it once, in the pub, and has been embarrassed about it since.

He said that it is the only activity he has ever found where eight people have to be exactly right together for three hours, where nobody can carry anybody, and where the whole village can hear whether you managed it.

The attempt in September

Their fifth completed peal, if it came off. The first with Mo in the band.

Mo is nineteen and had never rung longer than forty minutes.

They started at ten. By eleven Bernard could hear that it was going well, which is a thing you can hear and cannot describe. By twelve he could hear that Mo was tiring and holding on.

At about the two-hour mark Mo made an error.

It was small. It was recoverable, and it was recovered, because Anwen — who was ringing a bell weighing a ton and who had been ringing it for two hours — adjusted for it inside one change without being asked and without any visible effort, and put him back.

Nobody in the tower said anything, because you cannot.

They finished at ten past one.

Three hours and ten minutes. Forty thousand three hundred and twenty changes.

Fenwick was at the bottom of the stairs because he had walked up from the village to hear it, and he could not get up the tower and had not tried, and had stood in the porch for three hours.

The book

It goes in the peal book, which St Ida's has kept since 1874.

Date, method, the eight names in order of bell, and the time.

Mo's name is in it now, in Bernard's handwriting, on bell four.

He has been to look at it eleven times.