It started on the roads, then caught on in supermarkets. Now the ubiquitous '90s phenomenon has breached the tranquil British countryside.
For the second time in a week, bell ringers have been subjected to an attack at odds with the Christian setting of their pastime. Eight ringers in Blockley, Gloucestershire, southwest England, were locked in a belfry after their chiming provoked a neighbor to retaliate.In an earlier incident, Madge Mather, 64, took an ax to the belfry of St. Swithun's Church in the village of Compton Bassett, 50 miles away in Wiltshire, saying: "I had a choice of going to prison or going mental. I am prepared to go to prison."
She hacked through the solid wooden door and cut the ropes used to ring the bells, which she claimed had made her life a misery for 10 years.
In Blockley, when the group descended after an evening's quarter peal, they found they had been locked in by a broom cunningly wedged against the door. For 45 minutes their ringing had sounded out over the parish of St. Peter's and St. Paul's, but their cries for help went less noticed.
Something had to give and in the end it was the door - after a shoulder charge by ringer John Nicholls. "Obviously someone took a dim view of us ringing on a Monday night," he said.
The group, which is not based at the church but visits two or three times a year, was not expecting such a discordant welcome. But the tower captain of Blockley's own ringing team, Jan Humphries, was not surprised at the incident.
"We have had a lot of complaints about the bell ringing and people have been up to the tower to tell us to stop," she said. "But they are people who have bought weekend houses in the village and just want peace and quiet. A lot of people I know enjoy the bells and I would hate to see them being stopped."
The vicar of Blockley, the Rev Geoff Neale, said: "We have had one or two complaints in the past from people asking us to ensure that ringing is done at reasonable times and for a reasonable duration. This is the first time anything like this has happened."
It may not be the last.