From The Chairman

or Robert’s Ramblings

It’s been a busy Autumn for the South West with several Ringing Round the Regions, Committee Meetings, Ensemble Practices, a Christmas Prelude and the Christmas Festival.

We are always looking for venues for the Festival so if you have a church that meets the following criteria please let us know:

1. Good parking for at least 20 cars and nearby parking for those not bringing bells and equipment.
2. Good (several) toilets
3. A decent sized kitchen to handle the refreshments throughout the day
4. Movable seats/pews – we usually take up two-thirds of the room/sanctuary/nave/hall

My thanks go to all the SW Committee and non-committee members who have helped us again to pull out all the stops and provide a packed 2010 for the ringers of the Region.

Despite sub-zero temperatures we managed to hold the Christmas Prelude at Christow Village Hall.

I often jokingly invite teams to introduce themselves and make any excuses before they ring. Well, the ensemble was down by 10 ringers so beat that!

We still managed to ring God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen and The Holly and the Ivy and I am very grateful to the non ensemble ringers I cajoled into sight-reading some parts where I had no ringers at all.

Thanks also to Fiona for stepping in at the last minute to conduct Birthday Rag and Jolly Jingles when Heather Wren was struck down with flu.

Despite snow and a severe weather warning from my workmates about two feet of snow we still made it to Salisbury for the Christmas Festival on 4th December. We had a good day and the massed ringing was probably the best I have ever heard.

On reflection inviting teams to ring two solos and having three non-bell solo spots was a bit much but the programme was looking empty at the time. We ended up with a two and a half hour service followed by another two and a half hour drive home for Ockment Valley resulting in me returning the minibus and then falling into bed at 2am.

This year, as usual, we had several requests for handbell teams to play at weddings and a handful of requests from people moving into the area and looking for a team to join.

We had previously found the maps on the national web site were an invaluable help but unfortunately these have been taken down as we had not asked people if they actually wanted their team ‘flagged’.

Before I continue, a quick explanation of how this system worked is needed – I’ll try not to make it too technical.

By taking the Postcode of a team correspondent I got the OS grid reference of the centre of that Postcode area (usually a few hundred metres across). I then used a formula that converted the OS grid reference into GPS coordinates and displayed a flag on the web site using Google-maps. This does NOT give any indication of the address of the correspondent (unless they are the only person in the country at a given Postcode or live in the exact centre of the Postcode area!)

The system fell down a bit for teams whose registered contact lived in a different Postcode from where the team meets (e.g.Wincantata’s contact lives a long way from Wincanton!) – but we could fix that!

So, would you like your team to be flagged on a map of the South West to help us find teams for new ringers to join or teams to do a concert or wedding?

Each flag just states the team name with either a note to get in touch with the Regional Secretary for contacting the team or a direct contact number if you prefer. In short: no personal information and no contact information is given out on-line without your permission.

If at least ¾ of your team are fully paid up HRGB members (the service is a ‘perk’ of membership) and you would like to take advantage of this service, please follow the "Register you team link"

Give the Postcode you would like to be linked to your team (ideally where the team practises) and whether you are recruiting, taking bookings or both – and a short description of your group. You can stipulate whether contact information is supplied on-line or only available through the Secretary.

P.S. At the last ensemble practice every team leader present expressed a wish to be ‘flagged’.

ROBERT WILLIS