Thinking allowed

Surprise, surprise

I went yes­ter­day to prac­tice at Hem­ing­ford Grey. Although the tower cap­tain there is away on an exten­ded hol­i­day, this is still a weekly gath­er­ing of more exper­i­enced ringers. At the end of the prac­tice I was asked, ‘What meth­od are you learn­ing at the moment?’ Hmm, I thought, ‘Noth­ing really, busy run­ning prac­tices and teach­ing some begin­ners.’ Back came the sug­ges­tion ‘You could start hav­ing a look at Cambridge.’

So, I had a quick look at Cam­bridge Sur­prise Minor in Steve Cole­man to see what is involved. I also glanced at Cam­bridge Sur­prise major, and quickly decided that I’d con­cen­trate on Minor for now. If the Hem­ing­ford cap­tain were around he’d prob­ably throw me into the deep end with Major (as he threw me into Sted­man Triples and Kent Treble Bob Major without first try­ing Doubles and Minor).

Any­way, after read­ing what Cole­man has to say on the sub­ject, the next step is to com­mit this to memory, and part of that pro­cess is to regur­git­ate it here. (Warn­ing: if you are read­ing this and try­ing to learn Cam­bridge, then don’t assume that the instruc­tions here are right. I am doing this from memory as part of my own learn­ing process.)

We can divide a plain course of Cam­bridge into sev­er­al pieces of work: the front work, the back work, and the places, which com­bined with a couple of oth­er dodges, and some pieces of plain hunt, make up the method.

Cole­man calls the places the most dif­fi­cult bit, but they looked fairly easy to remem­ber to me (though per­haps not so easy to remem­ber when ringing, of course). Places are made in 3–4 up and in 3–4 down. Cam­bridge places in 3–4 up work as follows:

dodge 3–4 up, make 4ths place, make 3rds place, dodge 3–4 up, make 4ths place, make 3rds place, dodge 3–4 up

That’s it. Cam­bridge places down are the exact oppos­ite of this:

dodge 3–4 down, make 3rds place, make 4ths place, dodge 3–4 down, make 3rds place, make 4ths place, dodge 3–4 down

If I remem­ber cor­rectly, then the dodge in the middle of the places work is made with the treble.

So, we can build a skel­et­on dia­gram of this, show­ing the treble and the bell mak­ing places.

First, Cam­bridge places up:

-x1
x-1- dodge 3–4 up
x-1
x1
x1- make 4ths place
x-1
x-1- make 3rds place
x1
1xdodge 3–4 up with the treble
x1
1xmake 4ths place
-1-x
1-xmake 3rds place
-1x
1xdodge 3–4 up
1-x
-1-x
1x- and con­tin­ue

And secondly, Cam­bridge places down:

1x-
-1-xdodge 3–4 down
1-x
1x
-1xmake 3rds place
1-x
-1-xmake 4ths place
1x
x1dodge 3–4 down with the treble
1x
x1make 3rds place
x-1-
x-1 make 4ths place
x1-
x1 dodge 3–4 down
x-1
x-1-
-x1 and con­tin­ue

That’s enough for now. Next we’ll look at the front work and the back work, and then we’ll put it all togeth­er.

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