March Country Meeting 2015

This year’s March country meeting saw the Society invited back to Kettering by Derek and Jane Sibson. Peals were rung in the morning at Burton Latimer, Desborough, Finedon and Titchmarsh. The tour towers were Thrapston, Rothwell and Kettering. It’s been a few years since I went on the tour rather than ringing a peal, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. We were greeted at Thrapston with provision of a very welcome cup of tea before starting the ringing. I could really settle into this tour thing I was thinking!

As the tour commenced, so did the admin and my mental arithmetic was put to the test! It’s rather hard when money is given to you all at once, and your writing can’t keep up with the memory of who gave you what. Hats off to Nick, our junior steward who does this seamlessly on a regular basis at the Wednesday night practice! I digress! Between sums, we rang some lovely touches and the numbers present increased as we moved from tower to tower.

The peal results started to come in at lunchtime, all happy faces and good news (but I couldn’t find anyone to tell me the qualifying grand prix results!!). Where was Tom, our senior steward with this news!

A meeting followed in the church hall at Kettering. We remembered Muriel Reay, the first lady to ring 1000 peals, and an affectionate tribute was led by John Barnes. Also remembered were long standing members, Dennis Chapman, Pamela (Pam) Humphries and Adrian Semken. We were very pleased to elect our new member Alistair Donaldson, an ex-railway engineer whose application was supported by an ex-signal man; there’s got to be a "connection" there somewhere!! We congratulated Geraldine Forster on her 1000th peal and also Pat Newton on her 1,000th tower bell peal.

Following a superb meal provided by "Chief Cook" Pat Edkins, ably assisted by Anne Cook and others, during which Mr Sibson did sterling work as a waiter, we then proceeded onto the Beetle Drive. Well it’s been more years than I care to note, since your writer had drawn beetles, and once the basics had been disturbed in the distant memory, we were fully immersed into the luck of the dice! Finding my beetles were slightly sluggish to get moving and obtain enough legs (once it had been pointed out to me that beetles didn’t stand on just two legs!!) we progressed onto the second stage of the game, and Team Edie turned our luck with a very proud shout of Beetle! Maybe at a little excited volume level!

Great fun to be had by all. A really enjoyable country meeting and a good end to the day. Now, to roll for that 2.

Our thanks to Derek and Jane and all their team for a very enjoyable Saturday in Kettering.

Jo Dorling

View photos from this event in our gallery

Peal details on Bellboard

Peals rung for Society March Country meeting