Christmas day falling on a Wednesday meant that most of the churches we ring at scheduled their carol services for the Sunday evening. They mostly decided to ring at the same time too. Andrew Clark counted up the available ringers and scheduled ringing at Stepney, Bermondsey, and Rotherhithe which are the churches we regularly ring for service on Sunday mornings. Other years, the carol services have been spread around and we have managed to ring at more of them. This was Eva and Richard’s first carol services, so well done to them.
The weeks leading up to Xmas are usually very busy for DRC ringers and we were happy to ring for other special services at Limehouse, carol service at St George in the East, and Christingle service at Rotherhithe. Christmas Day finds many of our ringers out of London visiting family, but we were able to muster six to ring very nicely at Stepney.
The DRC party was scheduled to start at the Angel ( a regular end point for Bermondsey Tuesday practices) after the Sunday carol services. Trisha was able to get the upstairs room for us and arranged for them to provide food supplemented by fine dessert efforts from Sarah, Elizabeth and Linda.
Jonathan is making steady progress through the two cases of bottled Sam Smiths beer that the landlord got specially for him. I believe it reaches its sell by date in a few months, so any assistance will be appreciated.
Bg thanks to Gill for organising it this year.