Static. A voice. My eyes sprung open. Darkness. Definitely foreign chatter over a radio. Complete disorientation. Then I remembered that I was on the ferry and that I should try not to fall from the side of my top bunk. I reached to switch on the small wall light at the foot of my bed. Reaching down to the excuse-for-a-desk, I picked up my wristwatch and squinted. It took a while for my eyes to focus and register that it was nine in the morning. The voice on the intercom backed this fact up when it switched to English and told me the time and where I could eat breakfast. Once the babble had subsided, I thought, 'Stuff that,' switched off the light and went back to sleep. After all, I had only had less than seven hours' sleep and there weren't any windows to let in any sleep-obliterating sunlight. I emerged from the cabin wearing my trusty Ooberman ZX Spectrum t-shirt that I used as a nightshirt and yesterday's trousers. For me, fashion is usually left for afternoons. The corridor was empty. I fetched an apple from the cabin, shut the door and went to knock on Meghan and Rebecca's door.

'Come in!' one of them shouted.

'Come out!' I shouted back. Meg opened the door.

'Oh, there you are,' she said. 'Where's Clio?'

'Still sleeping. Come and sit in the corridor. Your cabin's too cramped.'

Meg, Rebecca and I were sat in the corridor talking whist I devoured my apple, when Pat ambled along.

'Ah, the fourth member of the corridor club,' I announced, then I ordered him to sit. Pat sat beside me obediently. The ship moved suddenly, and I was thrown to one side, where I attempted to clutch at the wall for support. Steven entered the corridor and proceeded to laugh at me, before standing opposite me.

'Sit down,' I said, 'Or else the ferry will tip and you'll fall down on top of me, which I won't like.'

He sat. We all talked. Once I had finished my apple, I was hit with an overwhelming desire. 'I really really want to throw this apple core at the ceiling,' I declared.

'Why don't you?' said Steven.

'Okay,' I said, and threw the core at the ceiling with a great deal of force. A couple of seeds fell into my lap, and the core landed beside Steven. There was a slightly darker mark on the pale ceiling where the apple had hit.

'Oh, you meant it,' said Pat. Meg couldn't stop laughing.

'Sh,' I warned. 'Clio's still sleeping.'

A while later, Clio popped her head around our cabin door.

'Good morning,' she said sleepily.

'It's quarter past twelve,' said Pat quietly.

'Clio, it's the afternoon,' I said. 'Get dressed and come out.' I glanced at my attire. 'I had better do so too.'

I emerged washed and dressed five minutes later to find that Pat had left and Ophelia and Bobby had come to fill his shoes.

'We're playing cards in Meg and Rebecca's room,' said Ophelia. 'Coming?' I fetched Clio and we went into Meg and Rebecca's cabin.

'What are we playing?' inquired Clio.

'Cheat,' said Meg.

'I'm a good girl,' I said, affronted. 'I'm going to be a nun.'

'It's a game,' explained Clio as we sat around the footstool.

'How do you play?' I asked, and it was explained to me. 'Oh,' I said. 'That wasn't very complex.'

'Yeah, it's good, isn't it?' grinned Clio.

'Who's playing?' said Bobby, who was dealing.

'I'm not,' said Steven.

'Square,' taunted Clio.

'Is everybody else in?' asked Bobby.

'Yes,' said Ophelia, and we played. After the first game, we decided that since we still had several long hours to pass on the ferry, we would play with two packs. As a result, Clio, a completely reckless player, ended up with a whole pack of cards before Meg inevitably won the game and everybody gave up out of frustration.

'It's getting rather stuffy in here,' I said, between games.

'Why don't you go and play in the lounge, then'' suggested Steven. Everybody agreed.

'Why didn't we just do that in the first place?' I asked.

'I'm not sure,' replied Ophelia. We packed up, locked up, and set off to find the lounge. Once we had reached it, we discovered that while one of the walls was lined with seating, the only playing surfaces were three sporadically placed drinks tables that were in the way of everybody. The tables were screwed to the floor, we discovered, and therefore completely immovable, which posed rather a Problem. Somehow, we managed to lodge the weighty and ungainly movable chairs into position around the table nearest to the door so that we wouldn't have to see each other's cards by all sitting on the same side.

Part-way through another losing for everybody apart from Meg, Pat, Damon and Sandy entered the lounge. With their entrance, we noticed Steven's disappearance, which was rather worrying, but went unsaid because that's the type of people that we are. Instead, we all greeted the new arrivals heartily.

'Do you want to play?' asked Clio.

'What are you playing?' said Xander in reply.

'Cheat, apparently,' I informed the three boys.

'Will we fit around the table?' questioned Xander.

'Of course you will!' encouraged Clio, so we found ourselves shifting around some more and fitting in yet more chairs. Madness. Later on, Jezebel turned up for a few hands. Then, and nobody remembers how, we ended up playing Snap, a complete regression back to our earlier childhoods. I use the word 'Earlier!' as some of us are still living ours, including me. Jez turned out to be far better than the rest of us, having played Virtual Snap at the pub, with me a hardly contestable second.

'I didn't win a single hand,' declared Xander in mock sullenness.

'Never mind,' I said, and placed a consoling hand on his shoulder patronisingly.

'Don't rub it in, Stevie,' said Xander.

'I'm sorry,' I apologised, 'But it's my job.'

As we continued, the game became more and more violent. Fingernail clawing came into play. People began to nurse their crushed digits. Clio was the major culprit, though we were all quite vicious in our mode of play, and as a result, she began to amass a rather sizeable pack. Jez always won anyway, though. One by one, we all started to become increasingly fed up with the monopoly. Having found a set of Jenga, Clio, Xander and I proceeded to play. Meg and Rebecca disappeared, Steven reappeared. Anybody else who was left shifter to another table for a game of something other than Cheat or Snap.

Jenga was rather difficult, due to the fact that we were on a boat, and to my penchant for choosing the most structurally integral clocks to extract. After my tumbling a particularly high tower on the second sudden and inexplicable whim of the day, I was finally sent away by the now rather annoyed Clio and Xander. Hurt (but superficially, I'll add for all you Stevie fans out there), I went to see what the others were up to.

'What are you playing?' I asked.

'Pontoon,' replied Bobby.

'What's that?'

'Well, you've got to make your cards add up to twenty-one like in Austin Powers and-'

'Oh,' I said knowingly, cutting Bobby off. 'Blackjack.'

'Whatever. Are you in?'

'Okay.' Bobby dealt the hand, and play began to proceed.

'You're doing it wrong,' I informed the other players. I then addressed Bobby. 'Mind if I deal?' I showed them how to play properly, by hiding the first card and encouraging them to call the game Blackjack rather than Pontoon. My father taught the fame to my younger brother and I at an early age to help with our mental arithmetic and logical common sense. We're not really big on card games in my family, but all the ones that we do know are either incredibly simple or involve the exchange of money. We carried on like this until Meg and Rebecca turned up to inform us that we were now sailing through the fjords. At that point, I had been celebrating with Xander and Clio on their whopping 37-layer Jenga tower that had just collapsed.

As I have always wanted to go to Norway and see the fjords, I rushed to the cabin, grabbed my camera and took the lift to the top deck, along with Pat, Damon, Jez and Ophelia. On deck, the view was spectacular. The sun peeked through an erratic cloud cover and reflected off the surface of the rippling green inlets on either side of the ferry, gaining their colour from the dense layer of trees that coated their rolling landscape. The textured coverage of the land gave the overall effect of a particularly gigantic bobbly woollen cardigan thrown loosely to the ground. The greenery was broken up by occasional spatterings of colourfully painted wooden houses. It was all very picturesque, and I used up several photographs to prove my admiration for this wonderful country.

'Slartibartfast was a genius,' I sighed, in a reference to the man who built Norway in 'The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy.'

'You're a Hitch Hiker fan?' asked Ophelia.

'Of course,' I replied.

'Brilliant!'

'Excellent, you cool frood. You really know where your towel is.'

'Hitch Hiker Fan?' asked Jez. I answered affirmatively. The sun peeped through some clouds, Biblical style, after a lengthy absence.

'That would make a really good photo,' said Pat. Jez backed him up. I took the photograph. We went inside to play table-football after half-an-hour. Jez had discovered the football table the previous night, but until now it had been occupied by a hoard of Norwegian ten-year-olds. Joined by Clio and Xander, we spent an hour of madness and violence as we waited for the ferry to reach Bergen.

About half-an-hour before we docked, Steven decided to inform us of his existence by evicting us from our cabins. Violinists. Give them the power of leadership and it goes to their head. Bags packed and cabins tidied, Clio, Meghan, Rebecca, Jezebel, Ophelia and I made our way up to the top deck so that we could catch our first glimpses of Bergen. The ferry slowly rounded a bend in the path of the fjords, and suddenly a sprawling cluster of the characteristic painted wooden houses came into view. It was as if we were looking on to a model town; it was so far away in the distance. A dark raincloud hung sullenly above the city, whilst sunlight streamed through from behind us. Everything had been hit by an attack of Midas, drenched in the deep golden hue of sunset. Beautiful.

Once we had disembarked, the supervising adults had the massive task of re-grouping seventy-nine young musicians. As soon as the crowd comprising of the other ferry passengers had subsided, we were finally let through immigration. The humiliating experience of a strange Norwegian woman checking our passport photographs, who occasionally decided to make the odd absurd comment, was endured. Nobody minded, though. I think that most of us were just relieved that the ground had ceased to move from beneath our feet. We were herded into our coached and driven through town to our youth hostel further up the hill. The roads were lined with the painted houses, and I was filled with more admiration for them having seen them close up. Having decided that we were in such a wonderful city, I was met with a shock when we reached the Youth Hostel. It looked like a hospital carved from concrete in bleak Seventies architectural style. Everybody felt an ever-so-slight sinking feeling.

There was a great deal of confusion in the hall as we fought to obtain our room keys. After much shouting and gesturing from all of us, Rebecca managed to get hold of Meghan, Clio, my and her room key. One of the last groups, we tramped off down the right-hand of the two corridors in the quest to find our room. It was on the left, halfway down the corridor - number 118. We soon discovered who else was in the corridor. Looking from the corridor to the room doors, two doors to the left were Pat, Damon, Sandy and Tony the invisible principle clarinettist - cum bass clarinet player, while two doors to the right were Lizzy and Yasmin with two other girls that we didn't know. To our direct left were Jack and Tim Tamlyn, two rugby-playing brothers from my school, of cellos; Alec Nimrod, also from my school, a viola; and Bobby. To our direct right, the only Year Sevens of the orchestra: Rena, with her friends Laura of cellos and Annabel the baby horn player. They were constantly hyper, as only Year Sevens can be.

On discovering that we had an en-suite bathroom and a rather nice room on the whole, Clio and I immediately went to gloat at Pat, Damon, Xander and Tony, who had to use the communal showers and toilets. Soon after, we smelt food, and Clio and I returned to our room to get hold of Meghan and Rebecca to aid in our search for food. Stupidly, the other three entrusted me with the care of our room key, as they believed me to be the most sensible of our quartet (how little they knew), and we set off up the corridor.

The dining hall was at the far end of the reception desk area that branched off the main entrance hall. It was fairly sizeable ' the dimensions were roughly those of an infant school hall ' and it was full of Bauhaus-style furniture, all smooth lines and surfaces. At the end furthest from the door was a freestanding buffet table in the centre of the room, laden with herring, unidentifiable fish in tomato sauce, cheese and ham, to be eaten with bread and/or Ryvita. We all grabbed a plate each, and queued up to satisfy our craving for nourishment that had hitherto gone unnoticed. As I went to get myself a cup of tea, Clio eyed me questioningly.

'At least I know that the water's been boiled,' I told her.

'You're paranoid,' she said.

'Yes.' Dinner was over and done with in twenty minutes. Hunger satisfied, Clio, Meghan, Rebecca and I sat at a table all to ourselves by one of the huge windows, through which we could see a great deal of Bergen. The sun had not yet set properly - it was still well above the horizon. I glanced at my watch.

'Gosh!' I exclaimed.

'What's wrong?' asked Meg.

'It's nearly eleven.'

'Surreal,' said Clio.

'But cool,' I offered. After Mr Morris had told us that breakfast would be served at half-eight the following morning to much grumbling and groaning, we all strolled back to our rooms. When returned to 118, I realised that I really couldn't be bothered to unpack, and so I gave myself the mission: impossible of making up my bedding. At half-past eleven, we received a knock on the door to find Rose Pendragon, another County woodwind teacher who was supervising, with a quite unremarkable-looking woman who nobody recognised who was carrying a clipboard.

'Are you all in here?' asked Rose. I looked around and counted. Two, plus one other in the bathroom.

'Yup. Rebecca's in the bathroom.'

'Okay. Sleep well.' And they were gone. Once Rebecca re-emerged, I took the essential stuff from my suitcase, showered, and fell into bed. No attention was paid to my roommates. I had felt far too lazy for that.

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