Why memories are Ev's goal tonight

Holmfirth High School 1976-81 offered much to the aspiring traveller.
Cross-Channel trips took us to Paris coinciding with the delicious final sprint of the Tour de France, Lille before it became moderately trendy and gale-blasted Le Touquet on the exposed Normandy coast. There was even a detour into Belgium one day along with a few days at the small market-square town of Hazebrouck about as far north as the teachers could take us in France.
Powerful memories? The throbbing aroma of breakfast-time non-filter Gitanes which intrigued us pre-health-warning teenagers, the soup bowl-sized mugs of hot chocolate - Choky - and the salty mounds of French fries well before McDonald's copycat pallid gunk had given the treasure a bad name across Europe.
Best of all, as geology O'level approached, a week in Buttermere Youth Hostel, a converted Lakeland slate house, a smooth grassy rise away from Crummock Water. As we paired off with fellow voyagers there were clambers up the stream rushing down from Blueberry Tarn, scrambles up the scree slopes and plunges down towards the flanks of Ennerdale Water.
Great opportunities ... but put into stark contrast tonight as we await the first big school trip of Ev. Aged 13, the lad has his bag packed, his foreign currency crisply tucked into a Post Office card wallet, his squad windcheater Cellophaned and his football boots tucked away. Dimples for Astroturf, studs for the real stuff.
In an hour's time he and 40 others from the local comp head off for 10 days ... in Florida (or What? Nine-hundred quid!? as it's now known).
For this is Olchfa School, Swansea, 2009. In store for them are two soccer matches, several theme parks, the Kennedy Space Center and the ubiquitous, worrying, "shopping day" at somewhere known rather morbidly as Florida Mall. An annual stroll up and down Newton Road, Mumbles, is sufficient for most of us.
Still, good luck to 'em ... and if Ev flies back with as many lifelong memories as those trips to the remaining Vimy Ridge trenches and Lake District glacial deposits then every penny of that £900 will have been worth it.
I think.