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I received this email today from my house mate Stephen. We live in Christchurch, quite close to a lot of churches. With all the bell ringing, Stephen gets a bit frustrated ! See his mail below:

From: Stephen Kirk
Date: 2009/11/27
Subject: Bell Ringer vacancies
To: Ringingmaster@cccdub.ie

Good Evening,

After listening to a litany of bell ringing from about 19:15 to 21:00 thus far I decided to do a search on Christchurch and noticed your advertising for bell ringers, now I have some objections to this. I appreciate the fine art of bell ringing as much as the next man and under different circumstances I might even be a fan.

However I live on cook street which happens to have a very high density of churches and monastic buildings surrounding it, in fact if it wasn’t for the methadone clinic and the roving bands of junkies and scumbags I’d definitely rate the general cook street/Christchurch area as at least the third holiest place I’ve ever been.

Now to the crux of the problem, I don’t have much of an objection to the the training and appointment of new bell ringers but to the fact that there going to be doing all that bell ringing in such a close vicinity to my ear drums.

Now you may say “Hey wait just a minute now, how can you object to such fine melodies as ‘dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun dun’”, and I agree it’s quite catchy, but it’s not the quality of the “music” it’s the duration and time at which it’s played, now the hour or so of bell ringing (practice I’m guessing) on a Friday is quite irritating after a week of work, but it’s the barrage of bells at 9:30 on a Sunday morning that are the reason for my thus far understated rage, because I really really like to sleep, it’s right up there with my love of food and I’m guessing your love of bells.

Now I guess I should try come up with some solutions and not just moan through this whole email,

1. Cover your bells in fabric to dull the noise, you get all the fun of pulling on your bells without anyone hearing.

2. Supply me with some sort of super quadruple glazing windows around my apartment, although the neighbours may get jealous and want some too, I’ll keep it just between us if you decide to fit them though.

3. I could use earplugs but they hurt if you keep them in too long, thought I’d just add that to show I’ve give the matter some thought.

4. Perhaps start competing in tug of war with each other while listening to some prerecorded bells noises, it has all the exertion of bell ringing with the noise of bells and the added fun of healthy competition.

5. Practice during the week, if you love bells enough you’ll make the time to get your hands on them.

6. Perhaps purchase some smaller bells they look like they’d be great fun maybe even a tambourine or a triangle, expand your horizons.

7. Now this is slightly related to point 6, take up a real musical instrument!

I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, you are no doubt a bell enthusiast and the idea of round the clock bell ringing in the convenience of your own home is no doubt right now making you salivate, I’m not saying your sexually perverted or anything, it’s not like your a priest (unless you are, although I think Christchurch is a godless protestant church so you may be a vicar), you just really love bells, pulling them, watching them sway back and forth over and over and maybe evening giving your bells a good rub and shine now and again, but you have to see it from my point of view the downsides of bells far outweigh the benefits in this day and age, you see I’ve got this handy thing called a watch so one of the main original purposes of the bell is quite useless to me as at any time of the day i can look at my watch, phone, computer, TV, cooker etc etera etcetera and see the exact time to the second and in some cases the millisecond if I really need that accuracy; your past time is becoming quite outdated, maybe you should take up some extra praying instead I hear it’s great fun.

Oh and in case you didn’t get the subtle humour throughout this email I’m suggesting that your playing with bells so much because you subconsciously love balls.

PS. If it isn’t the Christchurch bells making all the noises, please disregard this email, and point me towards the person I need to introduce to my Hurley.

Best Regards and a Merry Christmas,
Stephen.

*Photo by diathesis

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