Bells

With the exception of those worn by cows and those found on ships, just about every conceivable sort of bell seems to have been written about this week. Do you know what? Sorry cows, I'm going with the ships.

ship's bell - Cutty Sark

Bells have been used on ships for centuries. One of the earliest mentions of a ship's bell was that on the English ship Grace Dieu, in 1485. A few years later it was recorded that another English ship, the Regent, possessed two "wache bells". And that was originally the primary purpose of the ship's bell, to signal the progress of time and the changes of watch. In an era before chronometers, the passage of time would be measured by an hour-glass - or more strictly speaking a half-hour glass. The sand would empty from top to bottom every half hour and when the ship's boy turned the glass over to commence another half-hour, he would ring the bell to signify this.

Over time an elaborate 'eight-bell' system was developed to plot progress through a four-hour period, for all watches were four hours long. One ring of the bell denoted the watch was half an hour through, two that an hour had passed, three for ninety minutes and so on until eight bells signalled the end of a four-hour watch and the changeover of personnel to start the next watch (see below). Everyone understood the patterns and could hear them wherever they were on the ship.

standard table of naval watches

A ship's bell was usually made of brass or bronze and had the ship's name engraved or embossed upon it, and often also the date is was launched. It was traditionally the job of the ship's cook to maintain the bell in good condition. Quite often the discovery of the ship's bell was the surest way of identifying a wrecked ship, as was the case with a Portuguese armada ship found in 2016 on the seabed off the coast of Oman. The bell identified it as the Esmerelda, commissioned in 1498, part of Vasco da Gama's fleet that had been voyaging to India in the early 16th century.

But the ship's bell has always served other purposes than as a watch-marker. In a time before foghorns it was used to sound a warning to other vessels of its presence. In fact some small ships still use it for that purpose today. It is also used for ceremonial purposes. When the ship's captain or a flag officer or an important personage arrives on board or departs, the ship's bell is rung to acknowledge the event. It is also rather quaintly used as a font to baptise children born on board. 

ship's bell - unknown craft

While I was getting to grips with the eight-bell system, I began to wonder if the phrase to knock seven bells out of someone was in any way related. It turns out that as an expression it is naval in origin and means, as you might imagine, to go as far as one can (i.e. seven-eighths of the way) in inflicting a punishment without actually killing the victim. The first recorded instance I could find dates from a British newspaper, the London Examiner of 1850 and refers to an assault that took place upon an emigrant ship to Australia. It reported as follows:
'Mr Bainbridge, on returning to the vessel, was knocked down by Mr Ross, and the Captain wanted him or any of the malcontents to stand before him “and he’d knock seven bells out of them”'.

That leads on very nicely to today's new poem. Not exactly from the Imaginarium this time, it comes welling up from the deeps of the Memorium. I hope that's a word. If it wasn't, it is now. It relates to true events from the summer of 1971 that I'd not thought about for a long time, until prompted by all this writing about ships and bells.

Let's call her Maureen, for that was her real name after all. It was the summer after my A-levels and I had a holiday job washing up at a Berni Inn in Cambridge. Remember them? They were a chain of fairly up-market steakhouses very popular in the 1960s and 1970s. I worked there at lunchtime and again in the evening and because there was only an hour or so between the two sessions, I would sit out in the yard in between shifts and read a book. The work was hot, greasy and sweaty and the waitresses would sometimes buy the pot washers a beer out of their tips to keep spirits up. 

There had been a couple of attacks on women out alone at night (this was several years before the infamous 'Cambridge rapist') and so I offered to escort Maureen home after work as her house was on my own route home. Over those twenty minute walks across several weeks we got to know quite a lot about each other. She was probably twice my age, her dark hair beginning to show signs of grey. There was a sadness about her. She felt she'd missed a trick in life by not staying on at school and going to college as I was about to do. She was married to a trawlerman who was away for several weeks  at a time. They'd never managed to start a family. I suppose it was a lonely existence for her. She wanted recommendations for books to read and films to see. I offered to lend her books, go to the cinema with her, but said she couldn't. If her husband found out he'd come after me. That's when I first heard the expression to knock seven bells out of someone - me.

We'd grown quite fond of each other by the time my last stint at the Berni Inn came around. It had been an incredibly hot day and as I walked her home a huge electrical storm broke. We took shelter from the downpour under some trees at the end of her road. It was the place where we normally parted company and I would stand watching until she reached her front door safely. On this occasion we just stood there. She was sobbing, saying she was going to miss me so much, and apologising for being a mess. It was upsetting and I didn't know what to do except give her a hug, but that distressed her more and she ran off down the road in the torrential rain, lit by flashes of lightning, to her house. Of course I never saw her again. I stood under those trees for maybe twenty minutes until the rain eased off and then walked home trailing the sadness of the world.

Seven Bells

Framed like a climactic scene

from some tempestuous movie

of human love and loss...

the couple standing under trees,

in crisis, in a thunderstorm.

Drain all colour please, 

this should be black and white,

probably silent too, except for

a dramatic score, Morricone

or Mozart maybe, to chime

with the lightning flashes.

Pan in on a tear-wracked face,

make-up streaked. Is it terror

or sorrow behind her dark eyes?

And he so gauche, not knowing

where this emotional outpouring

might be going... though any

lip-reader could guess, for she's 

mouthing "miss you so much.

Sorry I'm such a mess."

Instinctively he hugs her

and distraught she turns to flee,

for who knows who might be spying?

Who'd tell the jealous husband

when he's back from the sea?

He'd knock seven bells for sure

but would the victim be 

the lover boy or wife?

He watches her run away 

through thunderclap and downpour, 

stands still in aftershock

under the trees, 

breathes in petrichor.

Pan out wide 

on a wet and empty world

as credits roll in silence:

The Waitress: Maureen

The Student: Steve

The Trawlerman: unnamed, unseen

The End.

Thanks as ever for reading. Comments/feedback always appreciated.  S ;-)

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Bells - Last Orders

 

The first bells of any significance to me must be the ones used by my father and grandfather to call ‘last orders’ and ‘time, gentlemen, please’ in their pubs. They were fixed to a post or wall behind the bar and with a firm tug on the rope, sent out a loud peal with an authoritative tone. At some point the word ‘gentlemen’ was removed and it was simply ‘time, please’, even in the Vaults. The Vaults was considered the mens’ bar, simply because no ladies would like to go in and from what I remember in my formative years, the men were not always gentlemen.

Another distinctive bell I remember from childhood is the ringing of my dad’s alarm clock. These days everything bleeps digitally from a radio or mobile phone, but this wind-up monster, which no longer works but I keep it as a treasured possession, was loud enough to wake the whole house and pub beneath – but not always my dad. I don’t know who was the genius behind the idea, but biscuit tin, yes, a metal one, a few of my marbles inside and the clock on top of the lid was louder than ever with the added power of ‘rattle’. That worked a treat.

I started secondary school at what is locally known as ‘the old Palatine’, an impressive building between Bennett Avenue and Park Road in Blackpool, which is now the University Campus of Blackpool and the Fylde College. It was great for me to return decades later and find it much the same inside, except the long corridor which stretched from one end of the school to the other now had sets of fire doors closing the length into sections. In my early school days it was open and at each end hung a bell. These two bells were monitored by duty prefects who rang them to announce the end of lessons. They could be heard all over the school and were much more efficient than the weak electric buzzers we had to listen out for in the new school twelve months later when we relocated to St Anne’s Road. The old building had character, the new one did not. The old building is still standing and is useful. The new one, demolished and rebuilt after only fifty years, or thereabouts.

I wish I knew what happened to my mother’s brass bell. It was made in the style of a lady with a tiny waist wearing a crinoline skirt. It lived on the mantelpiece for years, then, when my mum was ill and in bed, she had it close to her so she could ring it if she was alone and needed something. It is yet another thing that seemed to vanish into thin air after she died.

Here is a poem, Edgar Allan Poe, placing bells where he perceived they belonged in a life-cycle,

The Bells 

1

  Hear the sledges with the bells—
                 Silver bells!
What a world of merriment their melody foretells!
        How they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle,
           In the icy air of night!
        While the stars that oversprinkle
        All the heavens, seem to twinkle
           With a crystalline delight;
         Keeping time, time, time,
         In a sort of Runic rhyme,
To the tintinnabulation that so musically wells
       From the bells, bells, bells, bells,
               Bells, bells, bells—
  From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells.

2

        Hear the mellow wedding bells,
                 Golden bells!
What a world of happiness their harmony foretells!
        Through the balmy air of night
        How they ring out their delight!
           From the molten-golden notes,
               And all in tune,
           What a liquid ditty floats
    To the turtle-dove that listens, while she gloats
               On the moon!
         Oh, from out the sounding cells,
What a gush of euphony voluminously wells!
               How it swells!
               How it dwells
           On the Future! how it tells
           Of the rapture that impels
         To the swinging and the ringing
           Of the bells, bells, bells,
         Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
               Bells, bells, bells—
  To the rhyming and the chiming of the bells!

3

         Hear the loud alarum bells—
                 Brazen bells!
What tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
       In the startled ear of night
       How they scream out their affright!
         Too much horrified to speak,
         They can only shriek, shriek,
                  Out of tune,
In a clamorous appealing to the mercy of the fire,
In a mad expostulation with the deaf and frantic fire,
            Leaping higher, higher, higher,
            With a desperate desire,
         And a resolute endeavor
         Now—now to sit or never,
       By the side of the pale-faced moon.
            Oh, the bells, bells, bells!
            What a tale their terror tells
                  Of Despair!
       How they clang, and clash, and roar!
       What a horror they outpour
On the bosom of the palpitating air!
       Yet the ear it fully knows,
            By the twanging,
            And the clanging,
         How the danger ebbs and flows;
       Yet the ear distinctly tells,
            In the jangling,
            And the wrangling.
       How the danger sinks and swells,
By the sinking or the swelling in the anger of the bells—
             Of the bells—
     Of the bells, bells, bells, bells,
            Bells, bells, bells—
 In the clamor and the clangor of the bells!

4

          Hear the tolling of the bells—
                 Iron bells!
What a world of solemn thought their monody compels!
        In the silence of the night,
        How we shiver with affright
  At the melancholy menace of their tone!
        For every sound that floats
        From the rust within their throats
                 Is a groan.
        And the people—ah, the people—
       They that dwell up in the steeple,
                 All alone,
        And who tolling, tolling, tolling,
          In that muffled monotone,
         Feel a glory in so rolling
          On the human heart a stone—
     They are neither man nor woman—
     They are neither brute nor human—
              They are Ghouls:
        And their king it is who tolls;
        And he rolls, rolls, rolls,
                    Rolls
             A pæan from the bells!
          And his merry bosom swells
             With the pæan of the bells!
          And he dances, and he yells;
          Keeping time, time, time,
          In a sort of Runic rhyme,
             To the pæan of the bells—
               Of the bells:
          Keeping time, time, time,
          In a sort of Runic rhyme,
            To the throbbing of the bells—
          Of the bells, bells, bells—
            To the sobbing of the bells;
          Keeping time, time, time,
            As he knells, knells, knells,
          In a happy Runic rhyme,
            To the rolling of the bells—
          Of the bells, bells, bells—
            To the tolling of the bells,
      Of the bells, bells, bells, bells—
              Bells, bells, bells—
  To the moaning and the groaning of the bells.

Edgar Allan Poe

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Bells

Bells are probably one of the earliest things we hear as human beings. They are one of a number of things in the parents' armoury to sooth unhappy babies. And so that merry jingle jingle is seared indelibly into the infant mind, to be encountered throughout a lifetime until the final one that tolls mournfully for us all. Yes bells....they feature in many ways throughout life. Not all will remember the school bell, rung by a proud chosen one at the beginning and end of play time. Oh what a privilege that was - one that I sadly never experienced; doomed to look on enviously at the chosen ones throughout my time at St Gabriel's primary school.

Dennis fire engine with bells

There are those old enough to remember when Fire Engines, Ambulances and Police Cars had bells. These bells seemed to serve their purpose, and indeed had a reassuring sound, signalling heroes on their way to deal with an emergency. But progress saw the introduction of sirens which serve the same purpose but can also make you jump out of your skin if you are in the immediate vicinity when they are turned on. The old emergency vehicle bells can still be experienced from the comfort of an armchair when watching some old black and white Ealing-type film....a very pleasant experience in itself if you are in your sixties.

Christmas is of course a popular time for bells. Jingle bells have already been mentioned but what do jingle bells symbolize? Not having access to Encyclopaedia Britannica, i had to resort, inevitably to that font of all knowledge Google which came up with this:

'The affluent ornamentally wore bells as a symbol of wealth and status. In old Pagan beliefs, jingle bells are used to ward off bad luck, diseases, and evil spirits. Today some motorcyclists strap small bells to their handlebars to ward off road demons."

Which was new to me. I had been looking up Solstice Bells, but all that seemed to come up was 'Ring Out, Solstice Bells' by Jethro Tull, well worth a listen, linked here:Jethro Tull on TOTP 1976 

Most football fans that exist outside the Premier League will be aware of the Pompey Chimes and the famous bell ringer of Portsmouth FC, which is a beautiful sound to accompany the beautiful game.

Pompey's bell-ringing fan

Expect a game of all bells and whistles if you visit Fratton Park. The topic of football may ring alarm bells for some readers, so I'll move swiftly on before I'm tempted to make some terrible joke about Colin Bell they'd never get.

A year or two someone at work mentioned Urbexing, something I hadn't heard of at the time. When it was explained to me, I quite fancied doing it. I'd often seen empty boarded up buildings I would like to explore but never really considered it. I knew of an empty boarded up Church in Bacup that I'd always wanted to visit and as there was someone who knew the Urbexing ropes, we decided to go there. In the event there was only one way in that didn't lead into the main part of the building but into an area where a stone staircase led up into the spire to where the bell ringers carried out their noble art. Oh how mysterious it was in that room. Cobwebs and dust everywhere gave the impression of decay, the past and sadness. A second flight of stone stairway led further up unto the spire where the bells were. There they hung, solemn and silent. These were bells that rang out every Sunday morning until for whatever reason they fell silent. Oh how tempted I was to pull one of the ropes and ring one of the bells. Regretfully I hadn't the nerve to do it. With hindsight it was a chance missed. We left the spire to the spiders the silence and the ghosts of countless bell ringers down through the years. And being up there put me in mind of one of the most famous bellringers of all. He who rescued Esmerelda and carried her to sanctuary in the bell tower of Notre Dame Cathedral in medieval Paris. Poor Quasimodo. Deafened by the bells....the bells.

Quasimodo, hunchback of Notre Dame

Robert Giddins.

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Collections

Over the years I've collected a variety of things. as a teenager I collected seashells from my travel around the coast of Scotland. these were labelled and displayed in chocolate boxes. When I left a school at sixteen, I gave this collection to the science department.

Once at college I had a vast collection of books relevant to my coursework, and others related to specialist subjects.

As a young married woman I collected bells. So, when visiting places on holiday I would purchase a bell. They came in all sorts of materials ..glass, brass, silver. This was a vast collection and filled a display cabinet in the lounge. Downsizing in 2006 meant that this collection could not come with me, so it was sent to the local auction.

Since living in this area I have  amassed a large collection of books on walking....so many that at my age I will never walk all the routes! To accompany the books I have a large amount of O.S. maps. All these items are kept on bookshelves that I had put up in an alcove.

I also have a collection of DVDs of walks that I have done, holidays I've been on and any special events, since 2001- along with thousands of photographs stored in albums pre 2000, and on computer since then.

     The Collection

      It started with one....just one.
      It had my name etched on it.
      It seemed important.
      It didn't take up much room.
      It looked good on the shelf.
      It didn't remain alone - another took
      It's place alongside it.

      Soon I had half a dozen.
      Cleaned, polished, arranged neatly.
      Made in a variety of materials.
      Reminding me of places I'd been,
      Bought as a souvenir
      Or given as a gift,
      Or a token of love.

      It ended with a hundred ....maybe more ?
      It was  a vast collection.
      It had seemed important.
      It took up too much room.
      It meant a lot of cleaning.
      It was too much - couldn't come.
      It was no longer needed.

Thank you for reading, Kath.....

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Resolve - New Horizons

Happy New Year to one and all, let’s see what unfolds in 2018.

When I was younger, much younger and naïve, I looked upon New Year as a new start with everything from the old year forgiven, forgotten and packed away. We wished everyone the best, and still do, always hoping for better times.  Back in the day New Year’s Eve marked the end of a couple of weeks of parties in our pubs. Sometimes my friends and I helped out at a private hotel ran by a family we knew, then joined in with the party until the early hours, looking forward to new beginnings. Fond memories still mentioned forty-odd years later. If only that ‘off with the old, on with the new’ actually worked.

This New Year’s Eve was quiet but pleasant, seeing in the New Year with our daughter, son-in-law to be and our youngest grandson, aged three months. His big brother was in bed. We watched Jools Holland’s Hootenanny and enjoyed a midnight buffet in their warm and cosy lounge then walked back to our house.

Nothing changed with the midnight bells and fireworks. I’m still carrying the illness that has overwhelmed me since before Christmas.  Sore eyes add to my malaise.  My worries and anxieties haven’t miraculously melted away and I’m no closer towards making decisions for the future. What shall I do about work? Do we move or do we stay? I could do with the magic wand I believed existed in my youth. Meanwhile, I wait for recovery and inner strength to help me resolve my issues.

I need a Moody Blues moment.

New Horizons

Well I’ve had dreams enough for one

     And I’ve got love enough for three
     I have my hopes to comfort me

I got my new horizons out to sea. 

But I’m never going to lose your precious gift

It will always be that way

‘Cos I know I’m going to find my own peace of mind

Someday. 

Where is this place that we have found?

Nobody knows where we are bound

I long to hear, I need to see

‘Cos I’ve shed tears too many for me. 

On the wind soaring free

Spread your wings

I’m beginning to see

Out of mind, far from view

Beyond the reach of a nightmare come true. 

Justin Hayward, (from Seventh Sojourn, 1972) 

Thanks for reading, Pam x 

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Bells

      It’s a pleasure to be asked to write this week’s Lancashire Dead Good Poets Blog, on the subject of Bells. Looking at previous weeks blogs these are big shoes to fill, so please join me on an Indian summer’s day meander through a printable selection of the 20,000 random thoughts I will have today.

       Poetry has been described, like the eyes, as a window to the soul. In his poem ‘for whom the bell tolls’ 16^th century poet John Donne explores the interconnectedness of humanity. It is from this piece that we get the phrase ‘no man is an island’ made popular by Ernest Hemingway in a novel about the Spanish civil war and his 1943 screen play ‘for whom the bell tolls’, featuring the late (and very pretty) Ingrid Bergman. A timely reference as I look in horror at the plight and treatment of innocent families fleeing Syria. I’m sure I’m not an island on that topic. There is a stark and severe non-interconnectedness of humanity about that.

       I was fortunate to go to a local (Fylde Coast) private school. I got a free place because Mum was poor. Like all schools we moved by the bell. Thankfully there was a good sense of camaraderie, and some inspiring teachers, especially English. It was here I first became interested in poetry; Ted Hughes stood out against a backdrop of painful Taylor-Coleridge ramblings, as did Wilde and also the War Poets.  It’s topical to mention as we approach the centennial anniversary of Wilfred Owens enlistment to fight in World War One. His observational poetry of that time, in my opinion, remains unrivalled. Owens ‘Anthem for Doomed Youth’ captures the true internal turmoil of war, likening men to cattle, and almost certain death not followed by the ‘mockery’ of a church burial:

 What passing-bells for those who die like cattle?
     Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifles' rapid rattle
     Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers nor bells,
     Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,-
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;
     And bugles calling them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?
     Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
     The pallor of girls' brows shall be their pall;
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
     And each slow dusk a drawing-down of blinds.

        On a lighter note, references to bells are prevalent amongst children’s nursery rhymes. You can get some vitamin C advice, and anticipate future wealth from ‘The Bells of St Clements.” I’m not one for wishing misfortune on any living thing, but Little Johnny Flynn (of “Ding Dong Bell” fame) can plop my neighbour’s cat down a well to stop it defecating all over my garden. I have children. It stinks.  My neighbour once said if I got a cat it would stop their cat doing it. I don’t want a cat. It’s like saying to a non-smoker who quite rightly hates the smell of cigarette smoke “start smoking then you won’t notice it.”

        Anyway back to ‘bells.’ Whilst most discount retail stores are laden with Halloween paraphernalia, some garden centres and card shops have just gone straight for Christmas themes (some since the summer).  Cue bell mania.  Edgar Allen Poe really goes for it in his prose/poem ‘The Bells’ where he covers Christmas, weddings, war, bell ringers and ancient Britons.  Poe’s appetite for reflective philosophy is awakened in the following final couplet from the two stanza dream within a dream:

Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

        The sound of a church bell ringing out on a summers afternoon is quintessentially English. That with the crack of leather on willow, snug cottages overgrown with ivy, unnecessary politeness, babbling streams, grocers shops and shiny motor cars. But what’s this? Church bells are bad for your health, as ruled by North Hertfordshire District Council in 2013, silencing the bells at St Mary’s in Ashwell Hertfordshire on health grounds.  St Martin’s Church in Liskeard Cornwall was also silenced following complaints from someone who lived 300 metres away. Near enough, I would say, to spot a church upon viewing the house? It’s a bit like buying a house next to a pub and being surprised by rowdy people on the street around 11pm I guess.  The best ‘hells bells’ story must go to an unnamed pensioner from Sharow, near Ripon, North Yorkshire who locked some bell ringers in the bell tower when they refused to stop the ‘peal’ (some 5,040 individual rings). The team had travelled up from the home counties to practice. Eeeh its grim up north.

That’s the end of the bell blog. You could say it’s the bellen…. aah no lets keep it clean.

Muchos Amor

Ian Rusetear

Blackpool

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My favourite bells ...

Looking South East from Bishopthorpe

On the topic of bells this week, I became rather wistful and started to yearn for the village in which I grew up near York. The Church of that village (St. Andrews) had a set of bells which were rung with gusto every Sunday and although we didn't attend services as a family, I still find that sound a fond childhood memory. Being a village, set in the countryside, it had wonderful scenic views especially alongside the river and in the autumn it was evocative even more so. The smells of wood burning fires, damp leaves and sugar beet from the fields. Heaven!

So please forgive me while I take a trip down memory lane in this weeks poem:

St Andrews Church, Bishopthorpe.

Those bells

Cool autumnal morn
breaks across the landscape.
Broken cloud
in banks
roll imperceptibly
across the sky.
Muted tones of purples
pinks, oranges and reds
merge;
smudged together
with grey.
A low mist
blankets the ground
and as it rises,
trying to reach
the treetops -
all skeleton bare,
branches raking on high,
it fades and thins.
Crisp air catches the lungs
forcing cumulus billows
upon the exhale.
The slightest nip
bringing rosiness 
to the cheek.
Without a breeze
the stillness
does nothing to lift
the dampness
or the leaves
which lie
sodden and muddy
The path winds on
along the river bank
as I bird watch -
the Ducks, the Sparrows,
the Robin, the Thrush.
Sombre hued
Blackbirds and Crows
herald the coming day
in their own
individual ways
until a distant peal
of church bells
welcome the faithful
on a sleepy
subdued Sunday.


I love Autumn! Thanks for reading. ;-) x

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