The Methods Committee met for its final meeting of 1992 in Winchester as guests, once again, of Tony and Tessa Smith. We started off with a review of correspondence. Most of this had been expertly fielded by Tony already, but before long we found ourselves discussing a thorny legal point - should a Minor method with a 4ths place lead end, that happens to be a bob lead of a 2nds or 6ths place method, qualify as a recognised method with a name in its own right? While nobody was very enthusiastic about these methods we could find no reason to disallow them, and agreed that a sentence in the introduction to Treble Dodging Minor Methods describing them as "not recognised" was in error. So new method namers please take note, these names are not available for re-use or for unrelated Major methods.
This brought us to a discussion of publications. Tony had prepared the Collection of Plain Methods on Diskette, and sales of the diskette had moved into double figures already. Stocks of the Doubles collection were running out and we discussed whether to produce a new one or whether Doubles should be covered in the other collections. The decision was in favour of a new version of the Doubles book. The Collection of Principles had almost sold out, and Tony agreed to prepare a new version including the five principles newly rung since the first edition.
Tessa's excellent lunch prepared us for the traditional afternoon discussion of method extension. We studied the results of some work by Philip Saddleton, who had investigated extensions of the standard Surprise Minor methods up to 16 bells. Council members will be relieved to hear that after our success at liberalising the rules at the last Council meeting, we are not intending to push our luck with any more changes to the decision at the next one.
P.D.N.
The Ringing World, January 22, 1993, page 67