Last January that Master of the RSCY, Jack Page asked if he could bring a group Cumberlands & friends to our northern home in Tulloch at New Year – we said ‘yes’. He said that he wanted to focus on methods which had Orion S Maximus as ‘over the treble’ work but that there would be scope for ringing ‘just’ Orion & did I want to have a rope for that? I was pleased to have been invited & said ‘yes’ without bothering to look at the line. My husband Peter Bevis was disappointed that he hadn’t been invited to learn it too:-(
Then we looked at the line Peter was suddenly thrilled he wasn’t being asked to learn it, I was rather daunted.
The wretched line was un-learnable. I asked for tips & clues from Mike Clay (very experienced Edinburgh ringer & tutor of 12 bell ringing) – all he could suggest was to start from one of the bells ringing the front work (which obviously I wasn’t going to be doing in real life- I was going to be in the middle or nowhere). I struggled to ring 2 consecutive leads on the simulator in our ringing centre on Alderney. I could hold one place bell in my head but add a second and the first evaporated:-( I took the line on dog walks, train rides, plane rides & holidays. Finally I could recite the front bells & 11th & 12th place bells but the lines for 7, 9, 10 & 8 were hopeless:-( Months passed & I abandoned the front bells and took learning the back bells seriously – what a struggle – nothing to ‘hold on to’ – zig zagging all over everywhere, finally came up with some words for the various shapes so I could develop a ‘shorthand’ for the place bells – this was a watershed.
Finally managed a plain course on simulator on Dec 31st (almost a year after starting to learn it), rang 3 leads (7th place bell three times) for New Year and then – yippee – a peal on my birthday:
https://bb.ringingworld.co.uk/view.php?id=1686309
Jack thinks I may well be the oldest person to achieve a ‘first in Orion’ , I don’t know how you’d find out – what I do know is I’ll be more careful about saying ‘yes’ to invitations from Jack in the future:-)
Helen McGregor, Alderney
