Bingley Handbells News

With the continued closure of places of worship and the lockdown imposed on 23 March only allowing us to leave our houses for one of 4 specific reasons, our practices continue to be suspended.

In additional the National Rally at Sheffield and the Regional Spring Rally and AGM at Grassington have been cancelled.

It would , perhaps, have been possible to arrange a practice using Zoom or some similar App if we had thought ahead and taken a pair of bells (and accidentals) and a book of music home with us after the last practice. However we did not!

Luckily this is a quiet period and we have no performances booked in until the end of May so practice is not to vital. I just hope that everyone returns when practices resume and have not found too many new hobbies and activities to occupy their time.

We are however all keeping in touch – mainly by email – with little snippets of news from Bingley and beyond.

Here’s hoping everyone stays well and we are back with better news to report soon.

This is typically the quite time of year after our Christmas rush, but we never expected it to be as quiet as this. With the suspension of church services and activities we cancelled all our practices from March 18th until further notice. Hopefully this will be something which contributes in our small part towards the slowing down of the spread of this virus.

it is a particular shame for us as with our new (and returning) recruits we had been able to practice both our old favourites and new pieces ready for our up and coming performances. At nearly all our practices we had been able to play all 3 of our octaves.

There was only one problem however –  the bells did not look so shiny – there were plenty of sticky fingerprints! So at the beginning of March 5 of us got together to polish the bells to bring them back to their shiny condition. Any excuse for a good chat and catch up!

The next week the children from Trinity All Saints took them to Skipton Music Festival. They performed very well and played Frere Jacques, Jesus Loves Me and Ode to Joy and were placed second in their class. A very creditable performance!

Next year their target is to be first again!

With best wishes to everyone at this time

Solna Burnham

Secretary – 07884 233382

The new year began with our annual post Christmas meal. This was held in the White Horse and well attended. Thank you to Jane for organising and for Solna & Pam for sorting out a quiz to keep our brains working.

The next week we started practices again and were joined by two ladies from Trinity All Saints School who had learnt to ring as part of the surprise for Jane Glendenning’s leaving do. It appears that they were “hooked” and we hope they are enjoying ringing with us.

We have already had a number of requests to ring over the festive period and our diary is filling up fast so if you are also interested in inviting us to perform for you please contact our Bookings Secretary Anne as we would not want you to be disappointed.

So Christmas is over for another year.

As always it was a busy time for the handbell ringers.

We began at Mill View care Home in Bradford at the end of November where the residents all enjoyed our first rendition of our Christmas Music.

In December we visited another care home – Ashfield at Skipton where we had performed a few years ago.

In fact this was a festive season where we were invited to make return visits to a number of locations. We also returned to the Parkinsons Group at Baildon Community Link Centre and to the Brown Cow Inn at Ireland Bridge. Of course it is always easier to ring at places where the audience at sat down and we have their full attention.

In a pub, and particularly just before Christmas, people are obviously busing eating, drinking, ordering and generally chatting to their friends so that we are merely background noise. We trust the bells however added to the festive atmosphere and were appreciated.

Our final performance was at Beacon Community Church, Wibsey where we performed at their annual carol service. This was a lovely service with a choir, general community singing, poems and readings. There were even mince pies and coffee in the mid service break! We performed some pieces on the full 3 octave set in the first half and some 2 octave sing a long pieces in the second half. Then as we left the church for the drive home we discovered snow had fallen whilst we were inside – very seasonal!

Once again we had, unfortunately, to turn down a number of requests for Christmas performances due to our already busy diary. It appears that the message must have got through though and we already have a number of bookings for Christmas 2020 from groups who do not want to be disappointed again.

Please contact our bookings secretary Anne soon if you are also interested in inviting us to perform for you.

In the meantime, wishing you all the best for the New Year.

Solna Burnham (07884 233382)

Bingley Handbell Ringers