Bellingham International Camp: a memory

Out of the blue, a memory popped up. I'm sure I've written about our sixth-form school camp at Bellingham in Northumberland before. French, Belgian, German and Norwegian students also attended. We were given disgusting gristly pork pies for picnic lunches that we buried in the sand at the beach one day; the Norwegian girls accidentally bought Flash floor cleaner to wash their jumpers and one of the Norwegian lads had bought a second hand suede jacket that smelt so bad that swarms of flies followed him wherever he went. The Norwegian boys fed the Belgian chaps laxative chocolates and stood outside the toiled block all day laughing. Naughty.
But what I suddenly remembered was the little cafe in Bellingham village that we made pilgrimages to; there was a jukebox on the wall that played pop songs while we crammed in there together. The earnestness: we talked intensely, all staring deeply into each other's eyes, about our different cultures, the things we cared about, our families, the future. There was no time like the present, yet nostalgia was there too because we knew the moment that we were savouring was the fanfare to the end of our teenage years.