Sunday. Today was to be the day of our final concert in Norway, the last performance of the orchestra with its present group of people. It had been an uneventful year for West Wilts Youth Orchestra, starting with tentative rehearsals in September moving to a slightly stunning Christmas concert. In the summer, we player our Twenty-First birthday celebration concert at the Forum in Bath (which isn't even in West Wiltshire), and now we were in Norway, wrapping up the year's parcel. We were all a little bit sad, because it would be Steven, Tony, Pat and Naomi's last concert, but they didn't seem too worried themselves. In fact, in one of his rare bouts of speech, Tony admitted that he was rather glad to be finally leaving, but I reckon that that had something to do with being shoved on bass clarinet for n years. Maybe the tin man has a heart.

For the first time since our arrival on Thursday, the day dawned clear and bright, shocking everybody. In a mad bout of summeriness, half the orchestra came to breakfast in t-shirts and shorts, only to discover that we would be climbing a mountain that day, and it was really quite chilly anyway. So much for the sunshine.

The concert was to be another open-air smart-casual crowd-pleaser with a flexible programme. To our relief, there wasn't a cloud in the sky as we travelled to the centre of town with our instruments. We were dropped off at a hall of medium proportions where the reasonably-sized instruments were to be kept for the morning, while the instrument van was parked directly at our venue at a central square. Yesterday, I had lazily dumped Steve and his accessories on the van, so I had no instruments to worry about and so I could then concentrate on not falling over.

On arrival, it was soon discovered that the instrument storage hall was locked, so we were left milling around the entrance of the hall with nothing much to do. I soon heard the voice of Sheila, one of the cellists who I was friends with from being bullied into doing Wiltshire Youth Orchestra by Mr Morris.

'I suppose it is quite nice,' she had been saying.

I noted that she was talking to Fern.

'Mr Morris' a**e?' I asked her.

'What else?' said Fern.

'So are you starting a Mr Morris' a**e appreciation society, then'' I joked.

'That's a brilliant idea!' declared Fern.

Oh dear.

'Ooh, can I join'' piped up Meghan, who was nearby.

'Okay,' said Fern.

'Can I be treasurer, then?' I queried.

'Yeah, sure,' Fern replied.

'Hey!' cried Sheila. 'We could have a website as well!'

'Ooh, definitely!' agreed Fern.

'There is something wrong with you people,' muttered Clio accusingly.

Once everybody had got rid of their instruments, we were left to wander through Bergen for an hour. Having exhausted most of Bergen's possibilities (apart form the German dining house, but nobody was really that bored) there wasn't much to occupy us. The fish market was also off, because the uncharacteristic warmth had heightened the smell to near-unbearable for us fish laypeople. So, Meghan, Clio, Rebecca and I were left with the market and the shops littering downtown Bergen. And, of course, the Christmas shop. We headed for the market.

Strolling by the harbour, we heard strains of Russian folk music, and lo and behold, we came across a Russian folk group, brightly coloured outfits et al. A jolly, portly man bellowed out harsh-sounding syllables whilst threatening the crowd to give him money with his vicious tambourine. Hurriedly, I searched through my purse for small change and dumped it in a guitar case. Ha! The fat man would never get me now.

We met back at the hall for lunch, another culinary monstrosity provided by the Youth Hostel. My personal vow of the previous day was still ringing true, so I picked up one of the greaseproof-wrapped sandwich packages, and settled down to eat in one of the rows of the main auditorium with Meghan, Clio and Rebecca. Steven and Bobby seated themselves behind us, but I thought that maybe I should still be letting Steven cool off, so I remained silent. I unwrapped my sandwiched to a rendition of 'Bohemian Rhapsody' (which was lacklustre compared to ours), primarily from Jack Tamlyn and Percussionist Mike. A cluster of people from Coach 1 were congregated on the state, so there must have been a piano in their midst. The bite that I took out of the fist sandwich was the last conscious action that I made as Stevie. The Multiple Fragmented Personalities that I had managed to turn back into a single entity the previous night had come unstuck, and were about to wreak havoc. Not on the world, but on me. With the sandwich still in our mouth, Bad Stevie noted that it we ate any more she would so something that we would all regret, and so sent us to fetch a second packet of crisps that we weren't entitled to, but stuff that. When we had returned to our seat, she turned around.

'Hey, Steve,' she said. 'Are you still not talking to us?'

Coherent Speech Stevie nudged her. 'Me, we ' I ' mean.'

Steven gave us a look.

After lunch it was time to set up, so again the percussion section, Alice, Fern and us were charged with helping. The sun was shining brightly in the sizeable, welcoming square where we were to play, so Bad Stevie put on our sunglasses because she thought that they made her look cool. The other Stevies sighed like sensible parents of a rebellious teenager and put up with it. Soon, the orchestra began to take their places and tune, and curious Bergeners and Bergen-tourists started to fill up the benches lining the square. Mr Morris came over to tune Steve because he doesn't trust our pitch, and as he bent over to fiddle with the amp, we looked away from Fern because we knew what she would be doing and we didn't want to be laughing for the duration of the concert after a knowing look from her.

The concert kicked off with the English Folk Song Suite. The bass part for this piece is absolutely essential as it (in theory) holds the ensemble of the orchestra together. This is why we were rather shocked when Fern didn't show any signs of preparing to play after our eight bars' rest at the start of the second movement, and instead sat behind her instrument fiddling with her camera. We got ready to start playing whilst we assigned Bad Stevie the duty of casting Fern a particularly evil look, who only returned with a dirty grin. At this point, we realised what Fern was doing. As Fern had predicted so well, Mr Morris leant over in our direction to cue us in, gave a puzzled frown and Fern took the photograph, much to our amusement.

Overall, it wasn't a bad swansong concert for those who were leaving, except for Mr Morris' choice of closing number ('Lord of the Dance,' much to everybody's dismay). However, the sun continued to shine brightly and cheerfully throughout the performance, enabling us to keep our sunglasses on, which Bad Stevie rather enjoyed. Enjoying surreal high spirits, Fern, Pat and us sung our way through 'The Twelve Days of Christmas' in homage to the third movement of the Vaughan-Williams when we were packing up afterwards. The Stevies held on to the moment, because we were not looking forward to climbing the mountain at all. The persistently happy sunshine saw everybody climbing up the first leg of the mountain on the Bergen funicular railway. We shared a bright red carriage with Fern, Madrigal, Naomi, Kathryn, Damien Halley, Meghan, Clio, Rebecca and some other people.

'Hey, who's going to be in whose quiz team tonight?' asked Meghan.

Quiz- Rational Stevie remembered that we hadn't looked at the day's itinerary. Oh.

'We should have a team called 'The Mr Morris' A**e Appreciation Society,'' said Naomi, jokingly.

'Ooh,' moaned Fern,' That's a bit too obvious.'

'We should give it a name with the same initials,' we suggested.

'Such as?' queried Kathryn.

'Erm- Mickey Mouse's- Adriatic- Automobile Scam,' I hazarded.

'Okay,' agreed Fern. 'Want to be in it?'

Our team soon consisted of Naomi, Kathryn, Damien, Madrigal, Fern and I, with Meg making pouty faces on the sidelines.

'I want to be in your team,' she whined.

'Keep Steven company,' we said. Famous last words.

The funicular dropped us off halfway up the mountain. Looking over the protective railings, Bergen seemed like a toy town, and Bad Stevie had a sudden urge to crush its roofs beneath her feet. What a psycho.

'Now, you don't have to climb all the way to the top of the mountain,' explained Olaf, the man who would be leading us uphill, 'But I'm sure you'll feel a deep sense of reward and achievement if you do reach the top.'

No.

'And there is a nice spot for you to take some group photographs also.'

No.

No.

No.

Paranoid about falling, we had intended to set a slow pace for climbing, but Fern raced off in pursuit of Mr Morris and his tight jeans with her camera. It was far too amusing an episode to miss, so we raced off as well. The sun was still annoyingly upbeat, and we really didn't want to have to go through the whole ordeal. We're not the fittest person in the world. When Olaf offered people the chance to go back down halfway up, we jumped at the chance, but it wasn't to be. We needed at least one of the accompanying adults to stay behind to make sure that we didn't kill ourselves, but all of them wanted to experience the deep sense of reward and achievement that Olaf had preached about.

'Don't worry,' said Olaf. 'The climb is easier from here.'

Silly, crazy Norwegian. Too much fish.

When we had finally reached the top after much huffing, puffing and petrified slipping, it had become quite cold as the sun had finally gone into hiding. We dragged ourselves up a large piece of rock for a group photo, taking our obligatory place near the front due to lack of height, and we felt ourselves merging back into one and the Multiple Personalities slipping away.

I breathed a sigh of relief. All that exercise must have drained the Many Stevies and they were too lazy or exhausted to be separate from one another. I was one again. I breathed a sigh of relief.

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