For whom the bell tolls

Living in a small community can have benefits as well as a down side. My husband made a suggestion to the community about the church bells to consider that the quarter hour chimes could be turned off between 1 am and 5 am as the town is a tourist attraction.

We have no problem with the bells we love them however people we know who visit and other visitors say they find it hard to sleep with the bells chiming on the quarter hour all through the night.

Stand back and wait for the explosion.......... suddenly there is a media frenzy instigated by one of the local pubs. They produced a petition which was not a very pleasant document and inaccurate. I am surprised that the media was happy to promote such a petition and not question some of its contents and the possible repercussions of such a document.

The pub has received a lot of media attention locally, regionally and nationally and one has to question their motive. They claim attachment to the historic nature of the town but have tried to build in their historic back garden and dislike the narrow pavements where they persist in putting a dangerous A board advertising their pub.

My reflection on this incident is that it is very easy to become sucked in and land up very angry and stressed. I am human and in the first place when I saw the contents of the petition I was upset. I would like to change the saying don't get mad get even to don't get mad think realistically.

I considered why I was upset and when I thought about it I was angry about the injustice the inaccuracy and where a petition like this might lead in the future. Looking at thinking errors there was a lot of must, shoulds and oughts as well as how dare they within my language. All this thinking was doing was winding me up and it was me who was doing it by reacting unrealistically.

I took a step back and when I thought about it, I was concerned that this type of petition was a very fine line away form signing a petition to remove people from a community. Who would be next, and what might the consequences be? I contacted the local paper who ran an article with the correct information a few weeks later. I talked to local town councilors who are happy to try and develop a standard local petition and guidelines for people to use. Even if these things had not happened I would have been able to walk away because I had tried.

I have been so touched by the amount of people who have said to me they were very unhappy about the petition and how unfair and inaccurate it was. It would have been so easy to stay and home and feel I can't go out. The internal voice can be so destructive if we allow it to be the irrational mind takes over and you loose sight of reality about how things really are.

The sad part about all this is the bells have been silent for a year as money has had to be raised for their repair. The pub involved did nothing to try and raise money to re instate the bells it was only when my husband rang to see what he could to help raise money to get the bells reinstated that the idea occurred to him. Maybe this was not one of his better ideas!