In the Lower 6th
I went on a trip to London, ostensibly for a revision seminar.

What this translated to in practise was a four-hour coach journey both ways, and sitting for six hours in a lecture theatre with seats designed for people 5'6" or shorter (I'm 6'4") getting bored to tears getting told stuff we knew already by some droning old duffer and a very dynamic, enthusiastic fellow from Bolton who told us to "luke in the buke!" a lot. So it was no surprise that a handful of us buggered off down the pub for lunch - so much so in fact that half of us were still there at 3 o'clock.

As it was my first experience of serious drinking (and by no means my last), I had yet to learn some basic common sense about drinking out - the number one lesson I took back from that day was that you should not alternate pints of bitter with shots of neat whisky, or else you'll fall asleep in the lecture theatre, laugh uncontrollably, throw up on the coach some time later when it's starting to get bumpy, and get threatened with expulsion, being reported to the police etc. None of this happened in the end, not least because if I had been expelled, arrested etc. the average marks for that year's A-level papers would have slipped and their percentage of prospective university-goers would have suffered. In the end, I was just banned from school trips for the rest of the year (hardly a stinging punishment, as that was the only one in all two years of my A-levels.)

And funnily enough, they don't run that trip anymore.
( The Mock TurtIe ™ --- Thinks you are a cunt, on, Thu 7 Dec 2006, 12:36, Reply)