Middlesex 8 Bell Striking Competition 2013

This year, the UL entered the Middlesex 8-bell competition, organised by Tom Lawrence and held at Garlickhythe. This was the second time that we have entered the competition. Unfortunately due to the cross-over between the old and new Master there was some confusion of how the band was going to be organised. Fortunately, we managed to gather eight people together to ring Grandsire Triples.

The draw, which took place at 2.30pm, initially looked like the UL were going to end up ringing eleventh (out of twelve teams) much to Chris Rimmer’s disappointment as he wanted to get home and study! Fortunately, one team were quite keen to swap, so we ended up bravely taking the spot of ringing first. Due to our disorganisation, we weren’t able to have a practice before the competition, however we went ahead and produced a fairly respectable piece of ringing – Apparently far better than last year’s attempt which nearly fired out – or so I’m told!

The band was: 1. Sophie Middleton, 2. Roxy Hughes, 3. Ryan Noble, 4. Chris Rimmer, 5. Ben Meyer, 6. Andrew Brown, 7. Andrew Hills (Conductor), 8. Ben Barnes

Five of us were persuaded to ring in other teams, so we hung around most of the afternoon… and Andrew Brown ended up ringing for 6 teams in the end!! After we rang, Chris and Sophie headed off to continue with revision, whilst Ben B went to go and get ready for the UCL ball. The rest of us quickly headed up the road to where we would spend most of the afternoon in Ye Olde Watling and we got some beers in!

Unfortunately, the judges – Charles Botting from High Wycombe and David Cox from Egham seemed to be in some disagreement about the placing of some bands and we ended up with tenth place – although two bands did not finish – so I’m not counting it as losing! However, they did have quite a tough time with about three hours of judging to do! Apparently they did agree on the top three teams and even said that they thought that the teams they placed first and second were exactly the same band – not quite true, although AVB rang the same bell and called the same touch for the two separate teams!!

Here are the complete results:

  1. St Giles in the Fields (rang 9th) 240 Stedman Triples – 89%
  2. St Martin in the Fields (10th) 240 Stedman Triples – 88%
  3. Middlesex (Master’s band) (8th) 224 Plain Bob Major – 80%
  4. South & West District (5th) 224 Yorkshire S Major – 79%
  5. Kilburn (4th) 224 Grandsire Triples – 78%
  6. St Magnus the Martyr (2nd) 224 Bristol S Major – 75%
  7. Ladies’ A (3rd) 252 Grandsire Triples – 68%
  8. Foster Lane A (7th) 224 Grandsire Triples – 64%
  9. Foster Lane B (6th) 252 Plain Bob Triples – 59%
  10. ULSCR (1st) 224 Grandsire Triples – 57%
  11. Ladies 1 (11th) 252 Grandsire Triples – (early call, didn’t come round) – Disqualified
  12. Stepney (12th) 224 Grandsire Triples – (miscall, stood up) – Disqualified

Even though we didn’t do as well as we had hoped, the most important part was that we were able to enter a band into the competition and that we all had an enjoyable day. Hopefully we’ll come back next year with a far more organised team, ready to win! Many thanks go to Tom Lawrence for organising the event.

Ryan