We ate our final lunch at the Youth Hostel, a dismal affair that nobody really wanted to take place, solely because of what had to happen afterwards. Rooms had to be vacated, coaches had to be loaded, keys had to be returned. This was all taken care of after lunch, and I sadly bid my home of the past six days goodbye. As if in reply, the golden Norwegian sun shone through our bedroom window.

Whilst everybody else completed their packing and handing of keys back to reception, Meghan, Rebecca, Clio, Steven, Bobby and I were sat in the garden, along with some others. Because the Youth Hostel was so far up the hill, Bergen lay beneath us like a toy town. The afternoon sunshine emphasised the brightly painted houses amassed before us. We were casually chatting and enjoying the view, when Xander appeared.

'Do you want to come and play cards in the lounge?' he asked.

Before we knew it, we were gathered in the lounge, along with Xander, Pat, Damon and Tony, playing yet another game of Cheat with two packs and ten players. However, we knew that it would be the last time that we would be playing cards at the Youth Hostel, and though we tried to enjoy ourselves, out play was tinged with a slight dejection as we moved towards out final game together as a group. Last days are never fun, and I can never decide how I ought to feel. On one hand, I was returning home to Marmite toast and cricket, but on the other, I always feel as if I don't want the holiday to end, that I don't want to leave the beautiful country behind and say farewell to a group of people that may not gather again.

With a final adieu to the Youth Hostel, we boarded out coaches and travelled down the hill and into central Bergen for the very last time. The coaches were parked just off the high street, overlooking the harbour, and we were told that we could do what we wanted for an hour before we had to report for the ferry. Clio, Meghan, Rebecca, Steven and I chose to stay where we were, staring at the glistening sea before us, chatting aimlessly. After around half-an-hour, Richard appeared beside me.

'Stevie, I've decided that I'm going to get the SK Brann shirt,' he announced.

'Okay, let's go!' I cried. I glanced at my watch. 'We've only got thirty minutes, but we might just make it.'

Unsurprisingly, nobody else wanted to make the trip back into town with us. Richard and I hurried towards the shopping centre, leaving various puzzled pedestrians in our power-walking wake. The sports shop, when we reached it, hot and bothered, was empty, experiencing a mid-afternoon low period. Quickly, Richard tracked down the SK Brann shirts and selected one from the rail. An expression of pride surfaced on the face of the man working the till.

'SK Brann played Liverpool in the UEFA cup,' he cheerfully informed us.

I took another look at my watch. We had twelve minutes to get back before Mr Morris started pulling faces.

The brisk walk back didn't seem to take as long, but even the brief glimpses of Bergen that it gave us were enough for me to soak up some lasting final images of the quaint Norwegian city. Fleetingly, I wondered if there was a Bergen version of the Trevi fountain, and concluded that it was probably the fake waterfall close to the town square with a statue of a troll playing the violin standing upon it. Meg had already threatened to organise a reunion in ten years' time, so there was no need to undergo a silly tourist ritual to make sure of my return.

People were just beginning to board the coach when Richard and I got back.

'Thank you, Stevie,' said Richard. 'You were right. I would have regretted it if I hadn't bought it.'

'And I'm so proud of you for actually coming around and deciding to buy it,' I replied. 'You're one step closer to being me, spontaneous and impulsive as I am.'

'And that's a good thing'' commented a passing sarcastic Steven.

Well, isn't it?

The coaches drove us out of town to the ferry port, where we checked in and boarded the MS Jupiter once again. Having found our allotted rooms and dumped our overnight bags in them, Pat and I went to stand at the front of the boat to watch Bergen subside away from us. The bright sunshine danced across the rippling waves as a brisk wind blew around us. When we finally became tired of watching fjords, Pat and I moved quickly to monopolise the table football this time, keen not to let any small children get any games in before him. Clio, Damon and Ophelia were also gathered around the table, a heated game taking place between the four players.

Later on, I ate dinner in the fake New York-Italian restaurant with Steven, Ophelia and Clio. Over a square plate of carbonara, I gave my opinion on the badly-painted mural behind out table.

'That woman looks like a man,' I said.

'Which one'' asked Steven.

'All of them,' I replied.

'Fair enough,' said Clio.

Ophelia and Steven had both ordered slices of pizza, and as Steven picked us his cutlery to commence eating, Ophelia scolded him. Her argument was that we were in a New York pizza restaurant, and that pizzas were supposed to be eaten with hands.

'Well,' said Steven, 'How about you eat with you hands and I'll eat with cutlery, and the person who finishes first will obviously have been eating with the most efficient method.'

Much to Ophelia's dismay, Steven won, which Clio and I found rather amusing.

'By the way, Stevie, are you seriously going to write up the Corridor Club?' queried Clio.

'Yes,' I answered. 'What would you all like your characters to be called?'

'Well, I think I'd quite like to be Chlo�,' said Clio.

'Yeah, and I want to be named after some other Shakespeare character,' said Ophelia.

'How about Miranda?' I suggested.

'Yeah, okay,' said Ophelia.

'What about you, Steven?'

'Huh?' he said.

'How about Stephen, with a 'PH'?' said Chlo�.

'No!' objected Steven.

'Well that's settled, then,' I said.

That evening, half the orchestra wandered around the ferry aimlessly, n uneasy atmosphere hanging oppressively over our party. Some people chose to spend the evening in the bar, and Meg and Bobby were in the process of getting worrying drunk. As I sat on the back of the boat with Rebecca, Richard, Xander, Damon and Tony, Bobby emerged from the bar, declaring that he had just been served and that he was going to get completely out of his skull. We ushered him back inside, as we didn't want to be around when his seven-foot frame crashed to the ground, or, even worse, when Mr Morris found out that Bobby had been drinking underage.

'Shall I climb the flagpole?' asked Xander, as Bobby returned inside.

'Don't be absurd,' I said, and Xander, easily persuaded as ever, didn't climb the flagpole.

Damon and Xander eventually wandered off, but Rebecca, Richard, Tony and I remained where we were until the boat stopped at Stavanger. At this point, it was fairly late at night, but a small patch of sunlight obstinately remained in the otherwise dark sky. We decided to stay where we were for a while, so I fetched a packet of ginger nuts, which I had singularly failed to consume over the past week, and we slowly demolished the biscuits. As we sat munching ginger nuts, fireworks began to explode over the town, and I was filled with a deep sense of warmth, though that could have been due to the ginger nuts. I felt like singing, so I broke into the first song that came into my head, which was 'Yellow' by Coldplay, but it turned out to be quite appropriate as it was a clear night and the stars were visible as the shone down upon us. Tony began to harmonise, and we managed to get through the whole song, including all the guitar breaks. The two of us the proceeded to sing a whole host of random songs, including much of the Spice Girls' greatest hits, and ending with sea shanties, sung directly to the sailors below us. I'm not sure if they much appreciated it, though.

When we eventually became tired of the cold and the singing, the four of us packed it in for the night, and I returned to my room, where I found Clio. We stayed up late talking, and I managed to fall asleep during one of Clio's monologues, which she took very well. I woke up again at around 4am to discover that she had wrapped me in a blanket and placed a pillow beneath my head. Slightly disconcerted, I did the next best thing to do when a cup of tea isn't readily available: I had an inordinately long shower. And then I went back to sleep.

I managed to sleep through the Norwegian announcements over the tannoy, so I rose at a healthy half-past-noon (Norwegian time). After changing, I searched through my bag for food, which I ate, I then left the room for a wander as Clio was nowhere to be found. Upon discovering Jezebel, Steven and Naomi in the corridor, I was invited to eat lunch with the. I picked at the croutons from Jez's Caesar salad absently, watching the empty ocean roll around us. The early afternoon was spent with Ophelia, Clio, Rebecca and Tony in Jez and Ophelia 's palatial cabin. Tony was reading the sports section of the Independent.

'Oh no, they haven't gone and selected Craig White again, have they?' I moaned. 'Why on Earth don't they pick Flintoff?'

'Ooh, do you like cricket?' asked Tony.

'Yes, I'm sorry.'

'Why do you feel the need to apologise- Cricket's wonderful!'

'Because it is a constant source of persecution at school.'

Ophelia and Tony then proceeded to teach me how to play Trumps, which was violent enough for my liking, and Tony and I kept on littering our gameplay with tenuous references to cricket.

I spent my later afternoon with Naomi, Steven, Madrigal and Fern, reminiscing about the old times. Though this was only my third year in the orchestra, I was already one of the senior members who looked down on the regular new influxes of interchangeable second violinists. We remembered the slightly weirder days of Shannon Cosworth and Lottie Kington, when I had still played violin and Fern had been second bass to Craig Black. I wondered how long it would be before this trip would be 'the old days,' when I would be the senior senior member of the orchestra and I had played every piece of music on three different instruments.

The two hours before docking at Newcastle were spent exchanging e-mail addresses, playing violent games of table football, and even more violent games of Snap. Just before our arrival at Newcastle, Rebecca, Damon, Meghan, Xander, Richard and I went up on deck to catch our first sight of Britain, and there we stayed until it was time to disembark from the ferry. Britain was dreary and windy as ever, but I found the dark skies comforting after the disconcerting amount of fair weather that we had experienced in Bergen. Predictably, it felt good to be home.

Somehow, two more videos were found for the coach journey back to Rowbridge, and for the first leg of the journey, we watched 'Mission: Impossible,' which left all of the people who hadn't watched the film at least five times feeling extremely confused, and me feeling extremely superior. We stopped at the same service station that we had on the journey out to Newcastle, and most people chose to feast on Burger King offerings. There were only two people working as it was past 10pm, one on the till and the other in the kitchen, and the pair were quite overworked by the time we had finished with them. After dinner, I strolled over to the newsagent's to check that the Queen Mother hadn't died yet or anything. The second half of the journey was broken up by a viewing of 'Enemy of the State,' which made me become obsessed with the idea of blenders, rather than obsessively paranoid.

All too soon, though, we were back where we had started in front of Rowbridge Civic Hall, and it was time for uncomfortable goodbyes, promises to stay in touch, and wishes of a good summer. Slowly, my companions of the past week began to drift away back home, but worryingly, my mother still hadn 't appeared. We had arrived back in Rowbridge an hour earlier than scheduled, and my mother may not have experienced the joys of the phone tree. A concerned Mr Morris offered me the use of his telephone, and my mother was duly called.

'So, what did you think of Norway, then?' asked Mr Morris.

'It was good,' I replied, too tired, by then, for a more eloquent usage of the English language.

'Did you enjoy it, then?'

'Yes,' I answered, 'Very much so.'

There was a wall of a convenient height beside me. I sat down to wait and breathed in the cool night air.

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