12 September 2021
Our village church has rung bells for many hundreds of years and as I walk through the tower doors, we pass a gallery of portraits of the vicars past and not so past. I have often heard bells ringing across towns and villages, including St Mary’s in Ardleigh, and smiled inside just like everyone else tends to whether they are churchgoers or not. There is a magical quality about the sound, but I had never thought that I would be learning to ring bells myself.
Lisa and Adora answered a call for new recruits a few weeks back and, after that first evening, they came back buzzing saying that I would love it if I gave it a go. So, I went with them the following week and I have just had my fourth session (in three weeks) on Friday night. My first pull on the rope, feeling the weight of the bell and the subsequent single note that rang out, sent a shiver through me. I am not religious, but over the past eighteen months or so, I have become aware of the spiritual element residing in so many things around me. Not just the obvious things in nature that fill me with awe, but also the capacity and capability of humankind to create and deliver things of wonder.
The oldest of the eight bells in St Mary’s church is also the largest. Founded in around 1410 and weighing over two-thirds of a tonne, the tenor bell sits proudly alongside its younger and lighter fellows. When Robert Burford cast the bell at his foundry in London, Henry IV was on the throne and, standing there in the belfry, I am struck by who must have stood where I am and rung bells in this tower since it was built five hundred years ago.
The length of daylight hours is shortening by a couple of minutes each day right now, and the skies are starting to get tired. The sun, when it is with us, still delivers plenty of warmth, but when the evening comes the air and the ground cools quickly. The sky, as I look outside, is a milky grey and the birds are doing their final calls and flights to roost noticeably earlier than a month ago. The robins electrify the soundscape wherever we walk, with their precocious verses or flicking ‘chirrups and chirps’, staking claim to their own little patch of land and sky.
And as the fields around us get their annual trim, bearing stubble and dusty-topped soil, a combination of rooks, gulls and pigeons stroll around scavenging what they can from the already harvested grains. The oats were the last grain crops to be gathered. Next the smell of onions will drift in through the car windows whilst driving from a-to-b, or as we walk the dog in and around.
Next weekend, we drive Stanley up north to start his first year at university. And we will do so, coincidentally, at the same time as this year’s fledged birds are finding their voices, establishing their own patches, and finding their own way in the world. But before that, on Tuesday night, I will go and ring the bells.
The Bald Birder 