"Spring is sprung, the grass is ris, I wonder when the meeting is?" Tomorrow? - argh! Sunday brings the rare spectacle of all six methodists in the same place at the same time as guests of Tony and Tessa Smith in Winchester. The morning is given over to ongoing business and correspondence. Tony has captured John Fidler's classic 1925 pamphlet, Method Splicing, in machine-readable form and we can now consider publishing it. The Aussies seem to accept the inevitability of Emily Royal under the current extension rules, but are mollified by the discovery of an extension to Maximus on alternate stages. Vernon Bedford agrees that redefining methods to include "Differentials" is too difficult.
We have had two-way correspondence with Julian Morgan about method extension and the maintenance of collections, and one-way correspondence with the chairman of the Records Committee on these and other items. Can a peal described as Grandsire Doubles contain an extent of St. Augustine (a method in its own right)? Yes, if it just describes a composition of Grandsire.
Revision of the Doubles Collection progresses: a new index has been constructed to include variations and we agree a copyright notice for the machine-readable version; the mysterious departure of the chairman of the Computer Co-ordination Committee will delay negotiations about its distribution however.
Restored in the nick of time by Tessa's wonderful lunch, we begin the afternoon's brain-curdling discussion of method extension. Tony's R.W. article (page 198) has attracted three replies; the current theme is the difficulty of the notation used in the rules. We are now fairly confident of the effects of proposal 1 (wider interpretation of "most stages"), 2 (no more consecutive blows in an extension than its parent), 3 (extension using places from the treble in 2-3) and 5 (static extension above the treble). We need more work to be certain of proposal 4 (allowing the lead-end place into the grid) 6 (extending principles), 7 (extending by "modes") and 8 (inserting four sections at each stage). Feedback from "out there" is still very welcome, and we intend to approach some individuals with a known interest in the subject (and a computer!) directly.
BODGER
The Ringing World, April 3, 1992, page 324