Learning to Ring Bells

It's been a couple of weeks since Susan signed us up for bell ringing lessons. That red arrow points to the little room, about 70 narrow, winding, stone steps up, where we're learning the basics.

In this room.

Each big church bell has a rope that is pulled to ring it, although while we learn, the clappers are muted so the bells don't ring. You go back and forth from pulling down on the white rope at the bottom, or the red velvet covered bit at the top.

And you quickly learn that a 45 kilogram bell swinging back and forth has a lot of heft, and is to be respected. I've been assured that only one person has ever been injured, and The Society of Cambridge Youths has been ringing these bells for more than 300 years, so I trust them.

If you can read the plaques on the walls, they commemorate times when the bell-ringers completed a cycle that ran six or seven hours in length!

Here are more pictures, from when Great St Mary's got new bells in 2009, including a trip to the foundry where the bells were created.

We're settled in Cambridge, and can mostly find our way around town without Google. We're spending far too much on Uber because the local bus service is utter crap once you're outside the city center. Like, buses arriving 35 minutes late, regularly.

In a couple of weeks we move from a charming little cottage in Grantchester to a "couples suite" at Wolfson College, in Cambridge. It won't be as romantic, but it will save us some £200+ a month in electricity. Power in the UK runs two to three times the price in Canada, and the heating systems and house insulation can vary widely.

(Watch for an upcoming Globe and Mail column on the subject sometime over the holidays)

When you become a student at Cambridge you don't join Cambridge University, instead you become a member of one of the many colleges. Wolfson is very new, but still has its charms - and is close to the School of Music.

We now find ourselves watching news from Canada, the US, and England intently, and continue to be shocked or disappointed by what each of those groups is doing.

Meanwhile, Nova Scotia Power has, according to news reports, managed to screw up the bills of some 100,000 homes, and can't promise to sort out the mess before March. And, needless to say, winter weather has arrived, so tens of thousands of people are regularly without power. Honestly, the history and sheer incompetence - and ongoing big profits - of NS Power merit a book all on their own.

For many reasons, but including the headaches of being a landlord, and the reality that global warming will likely force us to spend tens of thousands of dollars to drill a new well, we've accepted that selling our lovely farmhouse in Nova Scotia is the best path forward. It's sad, because it is a lovely little home, and because I had planned years of work and upgrades when we moved there, but ultimately it just isn't the right fit for us.

(If you are interested in a very nice John Deere lawn tractor, let me know) (Delivery is not available)

Right now, we're struggling with the loss of our monthly rental income in Western Head. Our tenants literally disappeared with one day's warning, and now we're stuck paying for our Cambridge rent without the matching Canadian income to cover it.

Still, the 250 year old Blue Ball Inn next door is a lovely, warm spot for a beer and a pie, and dogs are welcome in stores and restaurants everywhere, and people are honestly terribly nice. There are many, many reasons to stay in the UK, despite a "Labour" government that manages to make the Canadian NDP look almost Left Wing.

We are, in fact, debating whether England or Vancouver should be our home on an ongoing basis. Both have their appeal, but both have their shortcomings.

We'll keep you posted.