In France, in Saint Quentin La Poterie, there is a bell tower and the bell rings every half hour.
On the hour, it rings for the time, so 2pm gets two rings, 10pm = 10 rings and midnight gets, I kid you not, 12 rings. We were sleeping about 100 metres from the bell, with windows open because it's hot there in summer.
What happens is one is sound asleep and the bell starts ringing. By the time we counted 11 rings, we were not sure whether we missed one ring or not, and maybe it was really 12, not 11.
Fortunately, other people must have the same problem. So, guess what. After a couple of minutes, when one is just dozing off again, they ring it again. So, there are 22 bells at 11pm and 24 bells at midnight. I can't remember now whether they do two on the half hour in case you missed the first one. I think they did.
If one retires early, say 9.45pm, then there are 2 x 10, 2 x 11, 2 x 12, 2 x 1, 2 x 2, 2 x 3, 2 x 4, 2 x 5, 2 x 6, 2 x 7 by morning. Not to mention those every half hour. That's 124 bell rings by morning, plus the half hour ones, which is 133 rings. Every night.
Oddly, the bell becomes a form of community focus and a comfort.
It's a bit like our son has a house about 6 metres from a train track in rural New Zealand, where it is totally silent and the stars fill the sky. During the night, it feels as though the volcano is erupting, there's an earthquake, or a train has derailed and it's coming through the house. It's quite scary the first few times. But after 3 days, it becomes background noise and even pleasant.
I think lots of other towns have such bell-ringing. It's a big bell!
Mqurice |
