Remembrance Sunday

As usual on Remembrance Sunday, we ring the Parish Church bells, half muffled  for about 15 minutes before the start of the Service at the War Memorial. Because the bells have been used for ringing, the striking mechanism of the church clock is disconnected, and the 11 strikes on the hour have to be rung by hand. After a minor fiasco a few years ago, we've invested all of £10 on a radio-controlled clock to ensure we get the time right!

The clergy and choir process from the church to the memorial which is on the green alongside the church and we aim to stop ringing as the choir form up at the memorial. As we can't see the memorial from the ringing room window, we have a ringer watching for a signal from a colleague outside who can. It all went very smoothly, with the hour being chimed at exactly the right time, immediately following the Last Post.




As a late arrival, having had to make my way down from the tower, I was only able to get a photo by standing on one of the tombs in the churchyard, and even there I had problems with an overhanging tree.
The memorial is sited in a small garden just outside the church, less than a hundred yards from the main A40 road. Last year, the police didn't follow their usual practice of stopping the traffic on the A40 for the two minutes silence for "legal reasons", but this year, the "legal reasons" seem to have been forgotten and it was stopped as usual, making the silence even more impressive.

Not as slick as some of the ceremonies one sees on television,  the two young scouts with the yellow flags failed to lower them at the appropriate time, but who cares? We no longer have a large military contingent from the now closed military School of Languages just down the road, but even so, the crowds seem to grow larger each year.