Minutes of Spring Meeting, 23rd April 2022 

Jane Le Conte (Chairman) to welcomed 17 members to the meeting at Town Church, Guernsey

1. Apologies for absence: John & Nicky David (Vale), Mike Bubb (Vale), the Jersey contingent – thwarted by cancelled ferry, Victoria McAllister also thwarted by cancelled ferry. The Forest and St Peter’s band

2. Those present stood to remember Elizabeth Willett (Ay) died 12^th Feb 2022 aged 97

3. There were no new members elected to the District but a number of Probationary members were promoted to full:

St John’s – Graeme Sproats, Beverley Sproats and Timothy Clarke – proposed by Justin (email),

Town Church – Oliver Blake, Donald Brock and Jennifer Hill – proposed by Duncan

St Anne’s – Nor James – proposed by Helen

All seconded by Paul Lawrence & unanimously accepted by the meeting

4. Update on W&P/SDG from Mike Bubb (read by Jane). All necessary legislation has been passed in Jersey, Guernsey are debating the legislation on 27^th of this month. Hopefully it will be passed and then approved by the States of Alderney and Chief Pleas. It is hoped that the transfer will take place in the third quarter of this year

5. The meeting noted that following online discussion & virtual voting on amending the rules of 8 bell, it is now permitted for Alderney students in full time education in Guernsey to ring for both Ay & Gsy in the inter-island 8 bell competition

6. AOB . There was a discussion around whether or not we should return to having human judge(s) for striking competitions or continue to use the Hawkear system introduced during the covid pandemic. The meeting voted 16:1 in favour of inviting a human to judge our competitions.

7. Steve put forward a proposal to have the 8 bell competition in a tower near Southampton in 2023. The advantage was that no one island would have home-team advantage. Only Guernsey would be facing extra expense as the other islands were having to travel anyway. The meeting recommended that this proposal should be emailed around the towers with a vote to take place at the September ADM.

8. In light of the continuing difficulties experienced in getting all 3 islands together despite Alderney and Jersey having surrendered the opportunity to host meetings, the Alderney ringers present decided to opt to re-instate the time-honoured rotation regime.

9. ADM – Sept 17th 2022 will be at St Annes, Alderney

Results of the 8 bell inter-island striking competition.

Janice had operated the Hawkear and gave the results: Guernsey rang first & took 8mins 59secs to ring 224 changes of Grandsire Triples – a peal time of 3hrs 15mins. Hawkear noted that the band maintained a steady pace.

Alderney rang second and took 9mins & 12 secs (peal time 3hrs 27mins). Hawkear noted that the band maintained a steady pace, with a particularly nice patch at the beginning

The score was Guernsey 46.9 millisecs** and Alderney 74.9 millisecs **

Guernsey were the winners

Jane then thanked Janice for working Hawkear, the Rector for use of the bells and church & the catering team for delicious refreshmentsJ There was a profit of £20 on the lunch which was donated to the Youth Travel Fund

**The millisecond scores are the average amount of time that each blow is incorrect by. Or to put it another way it is the average timing error (in milliseconds) for the whole band over the whole piece of ringing. If a team scores 70 it means that on average every blow will sound 70milliseconds before or after it’s supposed to.

All 1792 separate blows are measured against where hawkear expects each blow to be and the discrepancy is measured in milliseconds. Those milliseconds are then ‘sort of added up’ and divided by 1792 to get the average discrepancy for the whole band. ‘Sort of added up’ because you can’t just add it up as some discrepancies are positive and some are negative (early or late in our language) so they would cancel out when added but the maths involved is very rigorous and trustworthy. It’s called standard deviation if anyone would like to explore it further.