Last night, Sarah went off to play our twice-weekly game of badminton. Since I’m still rather wonky, I couldn’t play, so I stayed at home but just before she got back I had the job of getting some gentle exercise by walking, and picking up our reward of take-away for having played sport (shhhh… I know I didn’t play, but don’t tell).

Anyway… I poddled off to the chippy and on my return, decided to take a slightly different route. Now, the trip to the chippy and back would take a non-wonky person about ten minutes. It took me about eighteen - so not too bad. What I’m trying to get across here is the relatively small space in which these events occurred.

As I rounded the corner from Queens Road into Freehold street, I suddenly heard bells. Lots of them. They were ringing peals faster than any human campanologists would manage. But the strangest thing was that in the entire eighteen minutes, I’d been no more than 500 metres from where I was standing and hadn’t heard a thing. They hadn’t just started either… they were obviously in mid-peal. Aren’t bells normally more audible than that? They are, after all, designed to be heard for miles around to focus the far-flung faithful flock for their fulfilment of fidelity*.

Well, I know Loughborough quite well, and I knew that John Taylor’s Bell Founders were on Freehold street. What I had never considered was the fact that bell founders must soak-test their bells. That’s like when you make a technical thing with lots of buttons and before you sell it to someone you leave it running all weekend with things automatically poking its buttons to ensure that it works properly when the person you sell it to pokes its buttons non-stop for a whole weekend.

The inaudibility had to have been caused by a sound-insulated room of some sort. As soon as I was one street away, I could no longer hear the bells once again.

So there you go… if you want to hear manic bell ringing of an evening, pop down to Freehold street on a night when they’re testing the bells. Alternatively go into town when there’s a Carilloneur up our tower and listen to an altogether different sort of manic bell ringing. It’s often even recognisable as music (last time I heard it, he was playing ‘Master of the House’ from Les Miserables took me about five minutes to realise it).

(*sorry … I got carried away there)