Missing beers!

The coach ride wasn't particularly eventful. A lot of catching up on missed shut-eye ahead of a day of walking around cemeteries, reconstructed trench systems, memorials and battlesites.

You let Sam play his game and had a bit of a debrief with Mr Robbo and Mr Benz on the seats in front of you about the pool game. They were keen for a rematch but you told them you intended to retire as champion! Nothing was going to top that pinnacle of sporting achievement.

For a time, Courtney came up the front and talked to Mr Benz about upcoming races. It turned out that they were members of rival local running clubs so saw each other outside school quite often. You'd recently done a few parkruns but were stunned to hear your former English teacher had put in some stunning times!

You were thrilled to get your Personal Best down to below 24 minutes for the 5k weekly event but Benz had gone sub 20 minutes a couple of times, and there were guys (and ladies) older than him who were a lot quicker than that.

Mr Robbo admitted he'd done the town half-marathon a few years back too. There was more, you decided, to teachers than met the eye.

After Courtney went to stop Curtis stealing her sweets, you overheard Mr Robbo talking about the beer fridge being left unlocked and how a lot of beer had either been consumed or was unaccounted for.

Benz suggested just asking the students but Robbo, who ran the trip, was desperately keen the Principal didn't get word that teachers were drinking on the trip much less that they may have been allowed access to the **** themselves.

"We'll just have to put it all down as 'sundries' but maybe go easy tonight. We have a generous budget but we can't take the piss!"

Interesting. It seemed you were in the clear, provided you could dispose of the empty bottles before Sunday morning. Another conundrum that could wait.

The Saturday was brilliant. Not because of hot girls or stolen booze or pool table heroics. Just because of History. Sounds really geeky and lame, but the actual point of the whole trip was everything you did on that Saturday in Northern France. Tracking the battle of the Somme from the mine exploded at Lochnagar to the battle in Thiepval Woods where the Ulster regiment met their objectives only to be surrounded and obliterated - to the Thiepval monument itself which was a huge structure absolutely filled with names of soldiers whose remains were never recovered or identified.

You remember Curtis standing beside you looking up at it and you both sighed "fuck me..." in exasperation at the same time. Such a waste.

Next, you visited the memorial to the 38th Welsh Battalion who fought at Mametz Wood. The title of a poem from your English Lit texts. Mr Benz gave some background on the coach and then read the poem on location. He said after he finished to take a moment and just listen. Listen and think. Nobody was used to Benz being serious about anything but every single student sat opposite that woodland and you swear to this day that you could hear it whispering across the battlefield to you.

It was in this poignant silence that you looked for Lauren, suddenly needing affirmation that you weren't alone in feeling this powerful emotion.

She was already looking straight at you. You both smiled and looked away.

And that was it! There was a long walk around the trench systems of Beaumont-Hamel and a group photo on Bryony's camera. The hours had raced by and suddenly you were back on the coach and suddenly realised that there was one more night and a brief bit of souvenir shopping Sunday morning and the trip was over!

Back to school on Monday. Crap.

You'd better make it count then!