Dear Ringers,
Welcome to autumn! Summer seemed to stay for ages and then suddenly,
it’s gone. Since the last newsletter, we have had a number of events,
many of which have articles and photos in this edition. In July, we had
the popular Soiree hosted by St James’ Weybridge. I know someone was
writing an article about this, but it doesn’t seem to have made it into
this edition, so I’ll put a few photos in instead!
While some teams take a break over the summer, others continue
ringing – many have been hosting or attending Summer ‘Tea Together’
events – it is lovely to read about these. I know that some of you have
already organised Christmas Together events, and Martin has started
sending off music packs. Some ringers attended the National Residential
Ringing Week in Sheffield at the end of July. This was an extremely
enjoyable week and the concert performance at the end had the largest
audience we have seen for quite a while!
It was lovely to join St Marys Teddington for their Anniversary Rally. It
was a shame that so few teams were able to play solos. Some of us from
Wandle Ringers and Greywell joined together to form an impromptu
team, sightreading an arrangement. It was full of mistakes, but we did it
to show that this is not necessarily a ‘concert performance’, but simply a
chance to share a piece of music with fellow ringers. Many of us ring
pieces which we have heard another team ring at a rally – so it is clearly
worth it. Remember, there will always be ringers in the room happy to
stand in for missing team members, so always try and have something
which you could ring if asked!
The following weekend, Martin, Sandra and I travelled to Ropley for a
Begin to Ring day. It was extremely encouraging to see so many people
having a go at ringing, some for the very first time, and enjoying 3
themselves! I look forward to seeing how some of the teams and ringers
develop. I know some have Christmas performances planned, so hopefully
we will get to hear about these in our next newsletter. If anyone is
interested in hosting a Begin to Ring session, all you need to do is find a
venue and some interested people and we will help you with everything
else! Please do get in touch if you would like to host such an event.
And then last week, we hosted Ring Something Simple 3+ (the plus being
techniques and Christmas), where we had more than 80 ringers exploring
some simple repertoire and learning new techniques. Hopefully we will
have a full write up in the next newsletter. Something extremely
exciting happened on that day – there were a lot of non-ringers
attending, and so we had some forms to encourage them to join HRGB
and seventeen people did!! To those of you who joined, I hope you are
enjoying reading this; and if you know others in your team who didn’t
take up the offer on the day, please encourage them to join us too!
If you have read this far – well done! You will find along with this
newsletter the South East Region Bell Orchestra form – we are still
short of ringers, so if you are thinking about it, please get in touch with
Keith. I always say that you won’t know if you can do something or not if
you don’t even try, so why not join us for the audition day in November.
Also attached is the form for the Birthday Rally in January – this is
free for members, but get your form back quickly before all the places
go!
Finally – could you let me know if you have signed up to attend the
National Rally next year in Derbyshire. We have been asked to provide a
team for the concert, and it would help the committee to know who is
already going! Thank you.
Yours, Helen HELENLSECKER@GMAIL.COM