This year, one of the qualifier rounds for the National 12 Bell Contest was held at St Margaret’s Leicester. The top two teams from each of the four qualifiers, plus the host team at the final, now go through to the 12 Bell final at York in June. Here’s how we got on.
Leicester’s turn to host
So the day had finally arrived. Bacon butties table manned, bar set up, cakes and tea stall sorted. Raffle and LDG stall set up. We are ready!
The bands were assembling and nerves were starting to show on a few faces but we all knew we would be in for a treat of a solid 5 hours of ‘top notch’ ringing on the marvellous ‘if not difficult’ ring of 12 at ‘The Gate’.
All bands present and correct the welcome and draw was underway with the local band ringing 2nd of the day (always one of the favourite slots) although the main opposition of the day (Birmingham) had not been drawn to ring until late afternoon so at least the beer will not run out and be available until the results.
Teams started ascending the 50+ steps with no hiccups or interruptions and thankfully no ‘fire ups’.
Everyone seemed to be having a great afternoon and it was wonderful to have quite a few less experienced ringers around listening and socialising, some of which were attending their first striking competition ever let alone on 12 bells.
The results were in, judges ready on the stage to give results and silence in the pews, teams waiting with baited breath. 3rd out of 7 for the Leicester band not so shabby just not quite there! As only the top 2 bands go through to the final taking place in York in June.
After lots of clearing up most people left to catch trains back to far flung places, Exeter, Beverley, etc etc and some locals finished the night with ‘alittle more beer’ but a few of the younger supporters (with a few additions) decided on a meal to round the night off and tried out a Turkish Delight’.
A Great Day had by all!
Gail Harrison
A thank you from Carol to everyone who donated cakes, worked hard and made Saturday a success:
‘Thank you all for your help at the 12 bell qualifier. I hope everyone enjoyed the experience of meeting different ringers and enjoying the high standards of ringing. The cakes were wonderful and well received. Thank you bakers! The feedback from our guests was excellent.’
Carol Franklin
A View from inside the team
When the Qualifier towers are announced in about December time its then the challenge to find 12 bell towers that are similar in weight to have the bast chance in adapting on the day. However, since the Leicester band was hosting one of the 12 Bell Qualifiers (at St Margarets) we had a home advantage. This advantage was also helped by the fact that the visiting bands couldn’t practice till the day of the Qualifier.
As the chosen touch for this year is 269 of Stedman Cinques it would take around 12-15 minutes to complete. This meant that, in our standard 1h30min practice on an evening we were able to have a go at the touch anywhere from 3-5 times. The aim at the beginning of these practices is to get a rough grasp of the touch and identify its difficulties at certain points. This is because these touches are chosen to challenge every band by having slight annoyances for example the treble and the eleventh dodging together or have no music to try and give the bands nothing to hold onto at the tricky points. We were able to do this with relative quick succession and since that point its then just down to the finer details.
Like with anything the best way to improve is practice, so nearer the time, the band was able to meet more than our once-a-month practice to dedicate that time completely on the touch. In this modern world we have access to a computer program called HawkEar, this is one of if not the harshest judge ever because it is able to detect discrepancies far beyond what the human ear can detect. It also doesn’t help that the microphone that HawkEar listens to is in the belfry rather than what the ringers hear in the ringing room. Which can make it very difficult because of the decision to strike the bell on how we hear it in the ringing room or how the judges hear it through the feed.
The draw is probably one of the most anticipated things of the day. Most people will have different preferences of when to be drawn, however the common though is to be drawn 2nd, 3rd or even 4th. This is because the 1st yes will get it out of the way very early on but will probably be marked the harshest because of the judges getting acclimatised to hearing the bells through the feed. On the other side of the draw, it’s not so good to be drawn later in the day because then you’ll be tired and the adrenaline you had at the beginning will start to wear off.
Leicester were drawn second (12:10 start time), which is also thought to be one of the better draws in terms of when you ring as, at the start of the day the judges haven’t acclimatised to the ringing yet so will most likely mark the first one harshly, but then as the day goes on the judges will understandably get tired after a little over 4 hours of ringing.
Each team’s slot is a total of 40 minutes (this is the same for visiting or the local band), this is roughly 20 minutes to practice, a 5 minutes interim to start the piece and then final 15 minutes to complete the piece for the judges. So, for these 40 minutes its more than enough time to complete the touch once for the practice and then to then do the piece again for the judges to listen to (which is signalled to the judges by doing 2 whole pulls on the treble and second).
Overall, our test piece is one of the best pieces of ringing we’ve produced (which is what you want on the day) and as a result came a very respectable 3rd out of the 7 teams. This means that we don’t go to the final at York but we as a band were very pleased with where we came in the results.
Alex Johnson