John posted on Flickr about the sound of church bells, especially electronic carillons, and wondered if people find them intrusive or if they make them think of God. (These two are obviously not mutually exclusive but we won’t go there )

Church Bells in Spain and Scotland

I’m not a Christian but I love to hear the sound of church bells. I have lived in old towns and villages most of my life. These sounds that punctuate the day are something I miss in London. I just got back from Spain and the sound of the bells ringing the hours of the day, as they have for hundreds of years gives daily life a reassuringly grounded feeling. In the south of Spain at Christmas many towns have loud speakers that play traditional carols all day long. I love that too as the music is a wonderful mix of medieval chanting with Arabic overtones. I hated it when they played cheesy Christmas pop, like they did in Ronda

In St Andrews (Fife) there is a wonderful carillon, not an electronic one but a 1920s version that can be played with a keyboard. It is one of only four churches in Scotland to have a carillon. The instrument consists of 27 bells and is housed in the church tower. It is always played before Sunday morning service around 10:45 am. Sometimes other times as well, most often for weddings. The church web site says :

the first fifteen bells were installed in 1926, as a memorial to Rev Patrick Playfair, minister of the first charge from 1899 to 1924, and the inspiration behind the 1909 restoration. The bells were cast by John Taylor of Loughborough and dedicated on St Andrews Day, 1926. Two more bells, an anonymous gift, were hung in 1938, and six more, in memory of members of the Mercer family, were presented by Miss Jane Mercer in 1962. Four more were added in 1998 and dedicated on Easter day in that year.

I remember the dedication of the new bells, it was a big deal in the town. I never minded the sound of them, it fact I always thought it was a pleasure to hear. Some visitors staying in nearby guest houses used to object to it getting them up on Sunday mornings though. I was usually ensconced in MacGregors with a big mug of black coffee & a Sunday paper by then
The sound of bells doesn’t make me think of God. I’m just not wired that way I like it because it connects me to all those people who went before, to a feeling of continuity and stability. It reminds me that those people were, in fact, just like us. People doing the best they can in difficult circumstances.

I think I’m with Larkin , not with Betjeman after all, standing awkwardly in a quiet church, enjoying the stillness and the solemnity of the bells.

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For ages on of my goals on 43Things has been to have more fun. It’s a good goal to have, it doesn’t mean I’m unhappy just that there’s always more room for fun in my life. I spend a little time thinking about how to achieve this and the results are things like theatre trips, short breaks to Paris, and more everyday things, like a walk by the canal on a sunny day.

So one of the joys of my Twitter PLN has been (re)discovering Bernie DeKoven. Anyone who was working in with kids in informal settings in the 70s and 80s will remember New Games and the wonderful, silly and often hilarious results of playing them.

Nobody wins, nobody loses and everyone has fun.

It stayed with me and underpinned many of the activities I used with children in schools. Pure fun and if something about cooperation or groups gets learnt along the way, great.

Well, Bernie’s a blogger these days and he’s compiled a list of 54 kinds of Deep Fun. It’s a comprehensive list but in his comments Josh G. adds one more:

Bernie DeKoven, funsmith
I’d have to say … “thoughtful fun”.

Fun that thinks. Fun that thinks about how to make things even funner!
And maybe fun that thinks about others and how to make sure they’re
having fun too.

Thinking is fun.

Can you believe I forgot that?!! What was best about my time playing New Games wasn’t participating in them, though that was fun, it was facilitating them and ensuring that the kids and adults had a great time.

Maybe I need to remember that and incorporate more opportunities for fun into my students activities.

I’d also like to add another kind of deep fun to Bernie’s list:

creative fun

The kind of fun where you are absorbed in the creation of something, the act of making for its own sake not to produce an outcome, like making mud pies or messing with play dough.

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Tonight is Burns Night and ex-pat Scots all over the world will be eating haggis and toasting the bard. I can’t help but wonder what that gloriously irreverent poet would have made of all the mad trappings of a classic Burns Night.

Anyway, enough of my babble! If you want good resources for using Burns in school you could do worse than start with

The National Burns Collection.

Lovely resources, download-able packs for different key stages, virtual tours of various Burns Museums.

The National Library of Scotland

Lots of images and scans of original materials, chronological account of his life in various places, audio available.

Family myths about Burns

One of my ancestors (a Kirkpatrick) attended the first ever Burns Supper in Burn’s birthplace in Alloway.
My grandmother (a Wilson of that ilk) in a fit of ‘cleaning’ before moving to a new house in 1958 threw away a ‘Kilmarnock edition’. (1786 published by John Wilson of Kilmarnock only 600 copies ever printed “Scottish Poems by Robert Burns”)

My Memories of Burn’s Night

When I was a child my parents used to disappear to Caledonian Society ‘doos’ on the Saturday nearest Burns Night. This usually involved my father donning his kilt, (not the dusty coloured one that smelled of bracken that he occasionally wore from choice when we were ‘up home’ on holiday) but the ‘dress Lindsey’ one and a velvet jacket. My Mum wore a white frock with a sort of sash of tartan over one shoulder, (a plaidie - but a sort of fake one, no use what so ever in the North West rain!) a big fancy broach with an purple stone pinning it to the frock.

My dad said he felt a bit silly in that get up, though he was usually gallant enough to say my Mum looked lovely. He wasn’t a Highlander after all, but a Lowland Scot. Just like Burns himself. Still Burns liked to romanticise the noble Highlander and I suppose he’s partly responsible for the spread of the belief that that’s the true version of Scottishness. Most of it came later with Queen Victoria and all that Balmorality but Burns was there at the start of it.

All that tartan, all those formal speeches! If I believed in an after-life, (slipping quickly past that topic!) I’m sure he’d be wetting himself laughing at what it has turned into.

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