IT’S been 30 years, but you’ve never forgotten that magical two-day trip to France that ended with Stacey throwing up shoplifted camembert on the ferry back. Here’s what you got up to:
5am Saturday: Your whole household gets up early to rush you to the coach idling outside school, waiting to take two classes of 14-year-olds to Calais to ‘practice French’. By 5.30am you’re on your way and have eaten three bags of Space Raiders and four Breakaways.
6.15am: The coach waits at a service station for Martin’s parents to deliver his passport, which they’d forgotten he’d need. A further 20 minutes elapses to locate Lindsey and Natasha, who have spent £30 on pick ’n’ mix.
9.45am: On the ferry over, Wayne gets seasick and throws up on his trousers. He forgot to pack a spare pair so has to wash them in the toilet sink. For the next two years of school he is known as Chunderpants.
11.30am: Everyone’s ready to leave the ferry, except Susan and Nathan, who are missing. They’re discovered snogging on Deck C, causing huge ructions as Hannah had told Susan that Emma fancied Nathan, and Susan was only snogging Nathan to get back at Emma for flirting with Ryan.
12.25pm: Lunch break. The French are renowned the world over for fine dining. Class B3, however, eats the remainder of their packed lunch in a service station car park on the way to Dunkirk. Mr Muir confiscates a pack of Gauloises that Martin managed to buy and is seen throughout the weekend smoking them himself.
1pm-4pm: Dunkirk. History teacher Mr Turner attempts to teach the class about the Dunkirk evacuation in the location it happened in. B3 is preoccupied with having seen Miss Hudson and Mr Bishop groping each other when they thought no one was watching.
6pm: Hotel. Cheap and vile. But there’s a visit to a French disco to look forward to, which is an educational lesson in how staggeringly bad French music is. Emma gets off with an 18-year-old French boy called Guillaume until Miss Hudson separates them.
9am Sunday: Nobody has slept. Mr Muir placates the furious manager when Martin and Julian have a sword fight with baguettes at breakfast.
11.30am: Visit to Calais hypermarket, or the only reason the teachers agreed to come on the trip to stock up on duty free wine. B3 roam the aisles like feral dogs, stealing anything they can. Stacey makes it out with a wheel of camembert up her NafNaf sweater.
3.30pm: Stacey is throwing up over the side of the ferry home, having learned that camembert tastes how it smells. Nobody will sit with her on the coach.
4.30pm: The coach, now safely back in Blighty like those Dunkirk soldiers, is alive with rumours of what happened between Hannah and the lads on the back seat. It is widely believed to be a five-way orgy.
6pm: Your parents collect you asking how it was speaking French all weekend. ‘Très bien’, you say, not mentioning that the only French that passed your lips the whole trip was the chorus of Joe Le Taxi at the disco.
