Music Tour- Day Twelve

At 3am, we woke up.

Yes, 3am.

No breakfast straight away, either- we had to get dressed, go to the Dawn Service, and sing for our breakfast.

I didn’t know that we were allowed to wear our jumpers for the Dawn Service (though not for the service afterwards), so I didn’t have mine. I found out when we got on the bus, but by that time, I thought that I would be okay without it, and besides I couldn’t be bothered going back to get it or lugging it around Westminster Abbey later. So I soldiered on without it.

When we got off the bus at the Dawn Service, I found that I may have been wrong. Actually, I’m not sure if wearing a jumper would have helped because it was my face and legs that were cold- apparently 120 denier just wasn’t going to cut it for me on a British spring morning. I probably would have been semi-okay for tiredness if I wasn’t feeling so cold. The cold just made me feel terrible, and the terribleness made me remember my tiredness. In fact, I lamented to someone, “This is my first Dawn Service- and it’s probably going to be my last.” Stevie J happened to overhear, and he laughed before remembering that he should be serious and said, “Don’t say things like that!”

Programmes were handed out, but they never reached my end of the choir. If I had had a programme, I would have known that we were to sing verses 1, 2 and 5 of Abide With Me, and I would have known what the words were. Unfortunately, I thought that we were going to sing verses 1, 3, 4 and 5, the way we had practised in choir, and in choir we had been told that we hadn’t had to learn the words for verse 2. That was the first problem I had in the choir. I managed to borrow a programme off someone else later (they at least had someone that they could share with while I didn’t) when we had to sing New Zealand’s national anthem, so at least I had the words for that. When the band played, they left a random pause before the last line which threw everybody off, at least the first time around. I think they may have also done this for the Australian national anthem too. In any case, it was pretty annoying.

After the Dawn Service, we headed off somewhere else for breakfast. I can’t remember what the place was called but I do remember that one of the chaperones or teachers said that it was a “bloke’s club” which is why there were only two ladies’ toilets. (I was lucky enough to go when there were only three or four people in the queue- by the time I left the queue was several metres long!) Anyway, when we got to the place the ten of us found that most of the tables were taken up so, after Mrs F telling us/half-yelling at us to sit down, we accepted our fate and split up. I ended up at a table where I was the only girl. We went up table at a time to get our breakfast, and when our table was called, Mrs Harvey said, “Okay, boys, you can get your breakfast!” I went up to her and indignantly told her that not everyone at that table was a boy. According to her, I was the lucky girl among all the boys. (So she says.)

The next event after breakfast was our performance at Westminster Abbey. There was a bit of panic at first as the instrument van was not waiting for us and some of the teachers were trying to ring up to find out where it was. I was a bit nervous at this- the only time I’d left my clarinet on the van, it failed to arrive! Fortunately it turned out that the van was simply late, and not too late either.

Only Wind Orchestra performed at Westminster Abbey- everyone else was singing at the Cenotaph service. It made things a bit awkward when on the Westminster Abbey programme it said that one of the songs (Thine be the Glory) would be led by our choir- which I soon realised was represented only by us band members! There were some bits in the service which felt a bit drawn out but there were some bits which I found fairly moving, even though I’m an atheist.

The service was followed by a hectic pack-up of instruments before returning to the youth hostel. Eventually we loaded everything onto the buses, and after getting on the buses, a lady got onto the bus and told us that as there would be no eating on the buses and there would be several hours until we got onto the Eurostar, we would have to eat before leaving, so we did. When we returned to the bus, Claire, sitting at the back, said, “If anybody needs to go to the toilet, go to the toilet at the youth hostel! We will seriously punch you if you use the bus toilet.”

On the bus, I played Mario Kart DS with Angus, Boyuan, Jess and one or two other people. Angus was using his sister’s DS, and for some reason his sister had set the DS name to “Lindsay” so everyone was laughing at him for it. I did pretty well at the races but soon it was time to get off temporarily at the Eurostar station. I had a look at the bookshop inside the station even though I wasn’t planning on spending any money (I wasn’t even going to bother finding anything that I could buy with 7p).

Eventually we got back on the bus and the bus drove into the train. I was excited about going on the train because of course it’s a totally new experience. I also thought that there would be carriages for vehicles and then a passenger part of the train, but I was wrong. The train we were on was entirely for vehicles. There were 17 carriages (if I remember correctly) with toilets at either end, though I’m not sure if the toilet carriages were included in that count. We were in the second carriage, not counting the front carriage with the toilets (which apparently were vacuum toilets but I didn’t need to use them).

Our ears all popped as we went downwards into the Channel Tunnel. Although I don’t usually get claustrophobic, I did feel a little hemmed in because the train didn’t have any windows. I went out of the bus to take a bit of a walk to the toilet carriages and back. I had a bit of an odd fear that I would get trapped between two train carriages and fall between them but it was okay because most of the time someone would be opening the door on the other side so I didn’t have that to worry about. It seemed like only an hour before we had to reboard the buses to resurface but apparently it was only about 45min or less!

We drove out of the train into France, and then north into Belgium. Apparently there’s a sign indicating the border between the two countries and we shouldn’t blink or else we’d miss it. I think I blinked because I didn’t see it. My first indication that we were in Belgium were road signs in Dutch, especially the one pointing towards Ypres (Ieper in Dutch). Eventually we arrived in the beautiful Belgian town which apparently got practically rebuilt after WWI. We headed towards our different hostels. Bus 3 and Bus 4 shared the Salient School Hostel, and it wasn’t too much of a walk, which was good. After listening to the talk about rules and so forth, we headed up to our actual rooms, where I began to make a list of pros and cons about the place.

There were only six of us assigned to room 3, and it was a room designed to fit ten, so it was pretty comfortable. One of the bunks was pretty isolated, so we divided the remaining four bunks among us. I had a bunk to myself so I took the bottom part. My suitcase stank pretty badly due to the clothes that didn’t dry properly while I was in London, but Julia O possibly had a worse problem- one of the liquids in her suitcase spilled over half of her clothes. Once we were set up, we went and looked in one of the other rooms, where they weren’t so lucky- they had one of the attic rooms which looked quite cramped due to the slanting roof but at least there was the novelty factor I suppose.

Other good things about the hostel included the showers. Larger rooms had two showers, and since our room was meant to fit ten, that included ours. We had two showers for six people, which was as good as the shower to person ratio in the hotels. The showers were quite good as well. We also had access to computers downstairs (though they had AZERTY keyboards which were pretty annoying for us English-speakers used to the QWERTY variety), with free internet and calls to landlines. Finally, we had sole use of this hostel, as well as the hostels that Bus 1 and Bus 2 were occupying, so we didn’t have to worry about security.

There were some drawbacks, though. Firstly, we had to carry our suitcases up the stairs. I’m pretty weak, so I was glad that I only had to carry my suitcases up one flight of stairs. I felt sorry for the people who were sleeping on the 3^rd floor. Also, the next day I found that we were to have continental breakfasts as opposed to the full cooked breakfasts that we had been having previously. All in all, though, the hostel was a pretty comfortable place to stay.