|
Scottish Association of Change Ringers |
• The Society welcomes Helena Mattingley as a new member at St Cuthbert's. Helena has come to Edinburgh to do an MSc in Psychology this year. Hopefully we can persuade her to stay a while.
• Not quite a new member, but we hear that Peter Williamson is due to return with his family to Scotland in the next couple of weeks, welcome back Peter!
• Scotland's Perminant ‘Mini Ring' Featured on BBC TV. Full Article
• The restoration of the bells at St Andrew's and St George's in Edinburgh is now complete. Full Article
• Don't forget to check out our new peals database. It is truly excellent - many thanks to Jonathan Frye and Jason Hargreaves!
In October, the band at St Mary's Cathedral in Glasgow bid a reluctant farewell to Mike Harrison. Mike arrived to the 'dear green place' two years ago to take up a job at the Glasgow Transport Museum, and unfortunately neither they nor we were able to persuade him to stay longer!
Mike immediately took an active role in the social and ringing life of the band, becoming Deputy Tower Captain in very short order. During his time he also conquered the heights of 8-spliced Surprise Major, Glasgow Surprise Major and called a quarter of Grandsire Triples (which was extremely well struck).
In between his ringing and work duties, Mike and his partner Matt also managed to see more of Scotland and Eurpoe than possibly the rest of the band put together. His final grande tour was to return to his permanent home in Washington D.C. by sea. On his last practice, the band presented Mike with a memento of his time here and generally embarrassed him by saying nice (and true) things about him.
We wish Mike and Matt the best of luck for the future.
Thank you to Tina Stoecklin for submitting this article.
Peter Shipton, owner of the most Northerly Ring of Bells in the world, the Druim Croft Campanile at Nairn was approached by the BBC’s Landward programme makers, who wanted to feature the bells on their pre-Christmas show. The broadcast was scheduled for the Friday before Christmas with filming to take place in the week before . Peter welcomed a team of four from BBC Aberdeen. Producer, Camera man, Sound man and Presenter Sarah Mack. Preliminary filming and some of the techniques of bell ringing were demonstrated by Peter before the other 5 ringers arrived from Inverness and Kinloss at 19.00.
Introductions completed it was decided to film first and socialize afterwards. The ringers Alison Andrew, Sue Varley, Hugh Collins, Mark Burt, Mike Neale and Peter Shipton, are all members of the Association and have been ringing regularly on the bells for over two years. To give as good a performance as we could it was decided to ring plain courses of Grandsire Doubles while the camera man filmed us from many different angles. He then went up among the bells to get shots of the bells ringing.
Ringing completed we were then interviewed in turn on camera by Sarah whose questions ranged from, why and what we liked about ringing to how long we had been ringing. With answers of ‘to keep an ancient craft alive’ and in my case ‘I rang for the Queen’s coronation’.
After more than an hour of filming, what would the 4 minute item be like? We do have a DVD of the programme that could be copied. Email me at inverness@sacr.org.
The programme makers had a story they wished to tell and all of us who took part feel that ringing was favorably portrayed. As usual broadcast time severely restricted the amount of material that was used.
Mike Neale
On Saturday 13th of January the first peal of 5,024 changes was rung at St Andrew's and St George's, Edinburgh, following the recent restoration of the bells. The band comprised of Scottish Association members who had been involved with the project, either through assisting with the fundraising, volunteering to help with the reinstallation or both. Following the peal the band were joined by many others involved in the project including members of the fundraising committee for a well earned champagne celebration. The peal can be found on Campanophile.
This page is what you make it. Please submit news items of any length or seriousness to Publicity Officer for publication on the website.