Xander challenged me to Snap after lunch. I couldn't but oblige.

The heated game between Xander, Clio, Pat, Meghan, Rebecca, Damon and I had been carrying on for an inestimable amount of time when Steven decided to grace us with his presence.

'You're meant to be on the coach,' he scolded.

I inspected my watch.

'Bugger!' I cried, and pandemonium ensued.

Tony jumped down from his top bunk hideaway. Xander leapt to his feet in a commencement of his search for his A clarinet. Clio, Meg, Rebecca and I ran to our room to grab various instruments and equipment. Meg, who had carried her piccolo and flute in her luggage, fearing for their safety on the coach, searched for them vigorously through piles of clothing.

'Go and sit on the coach!' I ordered Clio and Rebecca. 'Save us some seats - your instruments are already there.'

I dragged my slipboard, a long, narrow piece of wood with holes in that I use as a stop for my bass, from a compartment in my suitcase. Throwing clothes from my case, I dug out Steve's stand, and Meg and I rushed to the coach. Seconds later, I returned to find the key for our room and lock our door in a flash of remembrance. I sprinted to reception to return the key, and then dashed through the foyer doors and down to the waiting coach.

Climbing aboard the coach, I ignored the glare of the impatient driver, Frank, and assimilated the fact that there were hardly any spare seats left. I strolled to the rear half of the coach and took a spare seat beside Xander, carefully avoiding the questioning looks thrown at me. Xander had been doing the same - we were not admitting at any cost that we had been last on the coach because we were getting into a game of Snap far more than any sane person should.

The journey to the Central Methodist Church seemed faster than the morning's, possibly because I was completely out of breath and unable to concentrate on my surroundings. It had stopped raining, and slithers of sunlight glimmered on the shining pavement outside the church. The van carrying Fern's and my basses, the harp and the percussion, had already arrived, and the percussionists from the other coach had already began helping to unload. I, however, had to worry about other things. Steve, a huge amp that Mr Morris had leant me for the trip and my bass stool were still in the coach, and I somehow had to find Duncan, my string bass, amongst all the timps and tubular bells. Glancing around, my eyes rested on Pat.

'Pat!' I cried, heading in his direction, my eyes shining in that 'I-want-something-of-you' way.

Pat's a good bloke, and so it was that I only had to worry about Steve and his stand. On entering the foyer of the church, I discovered that the actual congregational area was up a set of spiral stairs, and that Duncan would have to take the lift up. I dumped Steve plus stand in a safe corner at the foot of the stairs and went to find Duncan. As soon as I stepped outside, it began to rain again, and so I hastily lifted Duncan from the nice man who drove the van and lugged him into the lovely, dry foyer. Mike, Darren, Ralph and Helen, the percussion section, were facilitating the elevation of heavy instruments via the single small lift, so I left Duncan in their hands; he's far too large too miss, after all.

Upstairs, the church was not what I had been expecting.

'It's a bloody postage stamp!' I exclaimed.

'Don't complain,' said Fern, who had heard me. 'I've played worse.'

'God, I despise hardened musicians,' I mock sighed.

'Anyway,' Fern added, with urgency. 'Guess what?'

'What''

'I left the top of my drum stool back at the Youth Hostel.'

'Oh dear,' I sated.

'Oh dear,' agreed Fern.

'What are you going to do?'

'I'm not sure.'

'Ah.'

'Jez forgot the key for her bassoon case as well.'

'What a day for it.'

It took me about fifteen minutes altogether to collect and unpack Duncan and set up Steve. By the time I had carried out all of my bassist ritual, most of the orchestra had assembled in he hall, half-an-hour after our scheduled rehearsal starting time. I glanced at Fern. She had managed to pad out the top of her drum stool with her jumper, but it looked as if it would be very painful for her. Gallantly, I offered her my thick fleece that I was wearing to make life a bit more comfortable.

'Yes please!' said Fern gratefully.

The rehearsal was fairly routine. We discovered that the hall's acoustics were not as good as those of our resident auditorium, Wiltshire Music Centre. However, the rehearsal gave me a chance to refresh my memory of the program, which was helpful. Additionally, it was, for me, at least, the first time that we were starting to properly gel together, and some passages were actually inducing goose-pimples. That hadn't happened to me with this orchestra since perhaps even 'Finlandia,' which had been a good two-and-a-half years previously. That night's concert was going to be good, even if we had an audience of ten (including the staff that had come to Norway with us).

We arrived back at the church at around 7pm in our concert gear. I immediately went to check up on Duncan and Steve, who I had left behind out of laziness. Having determined that they were in tune and alive, I traipsed off in search of a green room. My search was immediately fruitful on entering a door stage right, then entering a second door on the left. The door was an entrance to a medium-sized room filled with classroom tables, chairs stacked around its edges, and cellists with their instruments, along with Fern, who was having a conversation with Annie and Peter, two long-serving members of West Wilts Young Musicians cello sections.

'I don't' see why people are so scared of him, though,' Fern had been saying. 'He's the loveliest bloke in the world!'

'Mr Morris?' I queried.

'Yeah, isn't he great'' beamed Fern.

'He's great for gossip,' I offered. 'And very easy to distract.'

'Hey, Mr Morris, did you see the grand prix on Sunday' What a race!?'

'Exactly!'

'And he's got loads of other obsessions, hasn't he?'

'Dire Straits.'

'Skiing.'

'Tennis.'

'Antiques.'

'Antiques?' I exclaimed. 'I didn't know about that one.'

'Oh yes, he loves his antiques.'

'No way. And his cars. Have you seen that little green MG of his?'

'No.'

'Very girly car, but nice.'

Annie and Peter remained bemused onlookers.

'And doesn't he have the nicest arse?' said Fern conspiratorially.

I had always tried to avoid acknowledgement of this fact because Mr Morris was middle-aged, bald and my mother calls him 'Jack', but I had to concede.

'Yes, he does,' I agreed reluctantly.

Annie was gaping, and Peter looked shocked but rather amused. Fern ignored this, and continued with her 'Mr Morris is wonderful' speech until we had to go onstage. I had rather lost heart after the arse thing. The thoughts of how perverted Fern was and how I would ever survive another three years of seeing Mr Morris on a regular basis kept running through my head on a continuous spool. This temporarily placed my vocal chords out of order, and so I walked out onto the stafe in silence with a haunted look on my face. The first half of the concert was a classical program: 'English Folk Song Suite' by Vaughan-Williams and 'Sinfonia Piccola' by a Finnish composer named Suolahti. There wasn't a piano part for any of these pieces, so I smiled to Pat as he sat clapping in the meagre audience. The audience had actually exceeded my expectations, and there were a good forty Bergerners applauding us as we took up our seats.

The Vaughan-Williams is a three-movement suite beginning with a rousing march, followed by an atmospherical slow middle movement, sandwiched by a final allegro whose theme sounds terribly alike to 'The Twelve Days of Christmas.' Originally written for windband and string bass, we were performing an orchestrated version that made full use of our string section. In the second movement, the high-pitched upper strings evoke images of desolate English moors, providing an effective backdrop that is impossible to re-create with windband for the haunting oboe melody. In the third movement, a pizzicato string doubling with the woodwind gives the intro an extra depth. In addition to the extra string parts, Mr Morris ahd chosen to double a tuba with the bowed parts of the bass line, contrary to Vaughan-Williams' original wishes. This was useful, though, as it gave the melody in the middle section of the first movement an extra bit of welly that only two double basses could never provide. Having played the string bass part in both windband and orchestra versions, I do prefer the latter, if only for the extra dimensions created by the string orchestration. With pride, I can firmly say that we did pull it off rather well that night in the dinky little Methodist church.

'Sinfonia Piccola' is much favoured by Mr Morris, and it was written when the composer was only sixteen. In essence, the piece is simply a symphony scaled down, which made it perfect for a non-audition youth orchestra. The first movement is a big, heavy B minor statement that is embedded with a deep nationalism reminiscent of Sibelius. However, despite its passionate melodies and dramatic orchestrations, it changes idea far to quickly at times, and it seems that the composer is trying to say as many things as possible in one movement without any interlinking comments, giving some sections a stilted, disjointed feel. Thisis also apparent in the Finale, a stonker of a B minor closing. The style settles down in the second movement, a lovely ballad without words where the boring bassline actually sounds good, for once. The pedal notes meant that I got to wallop out Duncan's bottom two strings, which is always enjoyable, and they enable the overall balance to sound complete. The third movement is a lively scherzo, described by Mr Morris as a 'drunken lilt.' This brings an image of Mr Morris pub-crawling through Helsinki through my mind, but I won't dwell on that, as it is almost as disturbing as his well-formed arse. Generally, Suolahti tried to do too much with his big timp rolls and full-bodied brass parts, but they do their job and altogether there is an impression of impressiveness, which is always good. Tragically, Suolahti died very young, and it pains me to imagine the masterpieces that he may have turned out had his style matured. We didn' really do 'Sinfonia Piccola' justice that night, but at least the audience liked it, which is always the primary consideration.

I was pretty much still incapable of speech during the interval, my mind freaking out under the strain of Mr Morris and his delectable backside. It was okay for Fern ' she was at music college far, far away from Rowbridge. I, on the other hand, would see Mr Morris (and his arse) nearly every week during term time, and so it would soon become very hard to look him in the eye. Fern can be really very evil sometimes, though I think that she doesn't really mean to be.

The second half of the concert was a repertoire of mostly horrible popular contemporary pieces arranged for orchestra. Audiences always love them, but they're horrific to play because of their sheer tackiness. First up was the 'Mission: Impossible' theme by Lalo Schrifin, which wasn't too bad, because I was allowed to play bass guitar and it was in 5/8, which is good fun to negotiate. It was followed by excerpt from 'Jurassic Park,' a typically stodgy John Williams crowd-pleaser, which is incredibly boring to play, especially for strings and bass instruments. Our third piece was an orchestration of some fragments of Ronan Hardiman's music for Michael Flatley's 'Lord of the Dance.' Though quite challenging in some parts, it manages to go into minus points anyway through complete lack of sophistication. However, I did get to have a bit of fun playing some funk basslines on Steve, which raised Mr Morris' eyebrow a couple of times. We concluded the concert with a Duke Ellington medley, which everybody enjoyed, partly because the orchestration was excellent, and partly because the tunes were so damn good. Our performance managed to coax the audience into a standing ovation, the first I'd ever received, if you didn't count the weird American choir who had visited two years previously on a tour of England. As an encore, which Mr Morris had blatantly obviously not been prepared for, we rattled off 'It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing),' the final number of the Ellington medley. Feeling rather happy and high from the lovely Norwegian people's applause, I rose to receive our praise with the rest of the orchestra whilst grinning rather wildly.

Somewhere along the line, somebody had made the suggestion that Steve should come up to the Youth Hostel with us, rather remaining on his own in the cold, lonely coach. That was probably me, actually. I had become rather taken with the idea, but I decided that I had better not bring in the amp, as any people in our corridor trying to sleep would become thoroughly hacked off with me. The reasoning was that I could prop Steve against a loose piece of wood, which would then amplify his sound. This didn't work.

Somehow, we ended up sitting on the horrible cold floor in our corridor, still in our concert gear, in a mad attempt to re-create the corridor club. I was leant against a wall holding Steve in a playing position, strumming a D major chord (the only one I had managed to work out). This was used as an accompaniment to my very badly out of tune version of Bob Dylan's 'Blowin' in the Wind.' 'Stevie,' said Steven disapprovingly. 'Just because we're in a youth hostel, you don't' have to sing folk music.' 'Stuff you,' I retorted, and launched into a full-blown version of 'Kum Bah Yah,' followed by ' Michael Row the Boat Ashore,' all in D major. This was short-lived, however, as Darren and his violinist girlfriend proceeded to eat each other's faces out at the other end of the corridor. Feeling rather sick, we moved into Pat, Damon, Tony and Xander's room.

Somehow, Steven, Pat and I launched into a rendition of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' with vocal fill-ins for all the instrumental sections and fights over who got to be Brian May. The image of stuffy leader-boy Steven losing himself in Queen will be forever implanted in my mind, nearly equalling the earlier arse revelations of the evening in chock factor. From this was the inevitable progression to vicious Cheat and Snap, which continued until Rose Pendragon turned up and sent us all back to our rooms. Resting on his stand in the corner, Steve remained forgotten after all the excitement of the cards. Somehow, after we had showered and changed into our pyjamas, Clio and I made the decision to return to the boys' room, Meghan and Rebecca opting to sleep because they were sensible. With no real reason to be back on entering the room, my eyes fell on Steve.

'Er, I forgot Steve,' I offered.

'Yeah, I see,' said Xander.

We stayed for two hours anyway. In those two hours we played very quiet games of Cheat and had a really good bitching session concerning all the people in the orchestra who we felt like slating, primarily Rose Pendragon and Carol Marrow. During this time, Clio and I ascertained that Pat was a far to nice guy, the perfect boy next door, in fact. We left at around half-past-twelve with intentions of sleep.

'Oh dear,' I announced, once Clio and I had re-entered our room. 'I forgot to bring Steve back.'

That was how we went back.

Somehow, somebody decided that we should all stay up the whole night. Somehow, we all agreed. Vague memories of me playing the bass riff from 'Everything's Not Lost' by Coldplay for half-an-hour straight on an unamplified Steve and Xander constructing a house of cards in the dark resurface, worryingly. At one point, we realised that we were playing two concerts the next day, but it was about four in the morning at that point, and like Magnus Magnussen, we reasoned that we had started, so we may as well finish.

Somehow, at around five, I zonked out completely for a couple of hours. When I woke up, I was beneath Damon's duvet, using Pat's pillow, and the four boys were playing Bridge. Tony and Xander were still in concert dress.

'Huh?' I mumbled.

'Oh, she's up,' said Xander.

'How long have I been sleeping'' I asked.

'Nearly two hours,' replied Tony.

'Did I snore?' Perfect example of tiredness-induced panic.

'No,' assured Damon.

'Are you feeling tired?' inquired Xander with excessive eagerness.

'A bit,' I offered.

'Want to play Snap?'

The reasoning was that he'd be able to beat me because of my lack of sleep. However, he had had the same amount of sleep as me, as even though I had woken up two hours before everybody else the previous day, I had just caught up, so we were all on pretty much level pegging. This meant that I still won, much to Xander's annoyance.

We played until about half-past seven, by which time we realised that we felt absolutely famished and so we parted in a quest for breakfast.

Looking back on the entire episode, it's hard to believe that this all took place without the influence of alcohol.

Ah, the joys of plural musicians.

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