First of all I need to say a huge thank you to Sally for the work that she has done over the past four years, steering us through the pandemic was a huge challenge and then leading the LDG back into ringing in Leicestershire afterwards. Sally has been heavily involved in supporting the training and mentoring of new recruits and the establishment of a bell ringing merchandising business that’s set to rival Amazon to mention just a few of her achievements whilst in office.

A bit about me – my background is in IT where I worked for IBM for 30 years starting on hardware engineering and progressing through Project Management and ending up as a Project Executive. I took the opportunity for early retirement from that career and I now live a life of leisure out in the wilds of Leicestershire near Melton Mowbray.  I still have an enthusiasm for engineering and problem solving so myself and a couple of other local ringers have taken it upon ourselves to try and keep as many bell towers in good order as we can – we are now maintaining the bells in 12 towers in the Melton area.

I started ringing later in life than many, when we moved to Twyford. In 2005, my wife Annette and I met the village Church Tower Captain (David Baker) at a village social event which led to us trying out bell ringing. We quickly became enthusiastic about ringing and with the mentorship of Owen Homewood we were introduced to the Melton District LDG meetings. I was elected Chairman of the Melton District around 2011 for a couple of years and then took on the District Secretary role in 2013 and have done that ever since – I’m still trying to pass this onto a willing volunteer!

I have been very fortunate to have had such great support from many experienced ringers in the LDG and it has made me passionate about recruitment and education. I took an ART course about 12 years ago and since then I have been on a mission to help train and develop new and improving ringers. In addition to being a member of the Bells Committee, I’ve chaired the Recruitment & Education Committee since the pandemic and I am hoping to persuade more of our members to get involved in recruitment and training to help spread the work load and run more courses.

I will try to get to as many District meetings as I can to meet our members, I’m also hoping that this will improve my bell ringing on caters and beyond. Sally assured me that you do not have to be the best ringer to be a good president (no offence taken Sally) – I do hope that this is true as I still have a lot to learn!

I hope you all have a happy new year and keep the bells of Leicestershire ringing.

Peter