The 2022 Annual General Meeting of the Guild was held in London on Saturday 2th November. We had hoped that after all the upset if the pandemic with our last AGM held remotely, that we would be back to some degree of normality, but that was not to be. We were thwarted again, this time by a train strike in these troubled times. This meant we received some 31 apologies for the meeting, many members having no means of making the journey.
It was ironic that the difficulty in obtaining towers had been compounded by the fact that the Railwayman’s Guild had an outing in the area on that day, but then they had to cancel at short notice because of their own Union’s strike. However, more than 20 of us gathered for an enjoyable days ringing.
The day began with a successful quarter peal of 1260 Grandsire at St Stephen’s Rochester Row, Westminster.
This was followed by ringing at the 10 of St Clements Dane in the Strand.
The next tower of the afternoon was to have been the 8 of St Botolph, Bishopsgate, but they cancelled with just a few days’ notice, as the church was double booked. We were therefore incredibly grateful to Geraldine Forster for all her work in obtaining towers and she managed to gain permission for us to ring at St Magnus the Marty at London Bridge. We caught a bus down to the Monument. Here we were joined by a potential new member James, who just happened to be walking by at the time and also happened to be a photographer for the Ringing World and who joined us for the rest of the day.
The final tower of the day was a short tube journey away at St Vedas, Foster Lane with its really interesting graffiti on the wall dating back to 1707. From there it was just a short walk to The Olde Watling where we had the upper room for our meeting and dinner.