Happy New Year folks!
Late on Saturday 31st December, 6 ringers pulled themselves away from Kathryn’s New Year party (a first for the Cole kids – though Grace fell asleep about 15 mins before midnight!) to head up Islip tower. We nearly had a lock-out as the visitors earlier in the day had left the key to the ringing room in the wrong place, but thanks to Sue looking at the colonies of ladybirds we spotted the key and made it into the ringing room in time to ring up and have 2 mins rounds before midnight.
Making sure we allowed for the leap second that was added to the end of 2016 the tenor tolled the 12 strikes of midnight (something the church clock hasn’t been doing for a few months) and then rang some call changes to announce the start of 2017 to the village. We then rang down and headed back to the PARTY 😀
Did any other branch towers ring in the New Year? (Let me know and I’ll add details to this page).
The first branch event of 2017 is on Tuesday at Islip – ringing is a great way to exercise off all those Christmas excesses so get ringing!
Anthony Cole