Time soon to have lunch and head on down to Queen’s Park in Loughborough for the annual carol singing event. Lots of people gather and we are accompanied in our melody making by the strains of the carillon.

What is a carillon? It is a rather unwieldy instrument consisting of a keyboard type device linked to numerous bells instead of strings or pipes. Loughborough’s one is housed in a tower that was completed 100 years ago, erected as a memorial in the years following the First World War. It is one of the largest in the UK: at 47 bells it is only narrowly beaten by a 48 bell tower at Bourneville junior school and that looks to be a shorter tower from the photos.

I’ve not yet been inside but I expect there are certain physical challenges in playing it. Sometimes the rhythms fall a little out and the crowd of singers is often a little out of step with the bells. However this Christmas ‘carilling’ is a fun tradition and we enjoy taking part.