[Magdalen] State Funeral

[Jay Weigel]

My daughter commented, on Trump not even looking at the service booklet to
recite the Apostle's Creed, "Someone should have whapped him over the head
with a BCP!!" I thought Melania should have at least delivered a
not-so-subtle poke in the ribs. But whatever, He's so unaware.....

On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 10:26 AM Simon Kershaw <simon at kershaw.org.uk> wrote:

> And being a little pedantic (who, me?) a "peal" is getting on for 3
> hours of ringing, consisting of 5000 or so changes -- so each bell
> sounding 5000 times. If it's less than that it isn't a peal.
>
> Why 5000? Because ringers try to ring as many different permutations of
> the order of bells as possible. On 2 bells there are only two patterns:
> a followed by b, or b followed by a; on 3 bells there are 6 -- abc, bac,
> bca, cba, cab, acb; on 4 there are 24 (= 4x3x2x1 = 4 factorial or 4!);
> on 5 there are 120 combinations (= 5x4x3x2x1 = 5!); on 6 it's 720 (=
> 6!); on 7 it's 5040 (= 7!). Ringers call this number the "extent" on
> that number of bells.
>
> On 7 or fewer bells a peal is 5040 changes, and on 8 or more bills this
> is rounded to 5000.
>
> The time taken to ring an extent goes up rather quickly: on tower bells
> (as opposed to handbells) from a few seconds on 2 bells, and a few 10s
> of seconds on 3 or 4, to two or three minutes on 5, say 20 minutes on 6,
> and getting on for three hours on 7. This is the largest "extent" that
> is practicable to ring.
>
> After that you're into silly numbers: nearly 24 hours on 8 (which has in
> fact been done two or three times in history), then getting on for 9
> days on 9 bells, three months on 10, three years on 11, and 30 years or
> so on 12. You are way into the realms of impossibility after that, given
> that ringers insist that the same people ring the same bells all the
> time without outside assistance.
>
> simon
>
> On 2018-12-06 21:28, Sally wrote:
> > In hearty agreement on the bells, David! And reminder to self, no
> > matter how freezing it may be, make sure to hear this somewhere in the
> > UK over the next few weeks.
>
> >> On 05 Dec 2018, at 20:54, cantor03--- via Magdalen
> >> <magdalen at herberthouse.org> wrote:
>
> >> The perfect finishing touch was the peal (change ringing) from the
> >> main Gloria inExcelsis Tower.  What a glorious way to leave such a
> >> service!  I was remindedof having breakfast at the Wessex Hotel dining
> >> room in Winchester overlookingthe Cathedral Close during their Sunday
> >> peal.  A good peal is unforgettable.
> >> Some neighbors don't like peals, but they can get over it.
>
>
>
> --
> Simon Kershaw
> simon at kershaw.org.uk
> St Ives, Cambridgeshire
>