Church Bells

It seems that every town in France, big or small, has a church with a bell tower. The largest church in Bagnoles is in the center of town. A grand building that sits high upon a hill, with stairs that seem to ascend to heaven itself.

In our neighborhood the church is only a block away. The stone building has a high bell tower that rises above the nearby buildings and can been seen even from beyond the city limits. It is a beautiful sight that can be admired from the window in our loft, where I have my office. I often look out at night and gaze upon the tower lit up in a majestic flood of light. The sky glows orange from the lights.

But the thing about bell towers is they have bells. And people that have bells, love to ring them. They ring them every hour on the hour. That’s fine with me. I enjoy hearing the bells as Alice and I take our walks around the little town. But ringing bells on the hour can be taken a little too far. Our church seems especially fond of ringing the bells at eight in the morning. Eight is the time when most people are going to work or getting up and preparing to go to work. But I often like to write late into the night. I also like to sleep late on Saturday morning, especially after a productive late night of writing.

This Saturday morning I was awakened by the sound of church bells ringing eight times, one for each hour. There are apparently two bells in our nearby church tower, a smaller one with a higher pitch and softer sound and a larger one with a deeper, louder “gong.” The smaller bell denotes the hour. The larger one is just for fun. I laid awake in bed, waiting for the bells to stop so I could continue my sleep. I counted the ringing of the bell for lack of anything else to think upon. One hundred twenty five (125) times the bell was struck. That’s not counting the dozen or so times it continued to swing as it slowly stopped swaying to and fro, the little bell clapper gonging lighter each time until it no longer struck the sides. Now it seems to me this is an excessive number of times to strike a bell at eight in the morning. French people do have alarm clocks and use them if needed. Noon would seem to be a better time to play with large, loud, bells, at least it would seem so to me. Or maybe five in the evening, so no one would forget to go home from work. But eight in the morning, especially a Saturday morning, seems like just excessive wear on an old bell. If it was intended to get everyone up, it succeeded with me. I got up and started a breakfast of eggs, ham (can't find American style bacon here) and two cups of coffee.