The School Trip

Would you like carbon with that sir?

My favourite school trip¹, ever, was a day out at Heathrow Airport, followed by a tour of Southampton Container Port.

Aeroplanes! Back then they had propellers, two sets of wings and frequent prangs with airships. And bombs.

Then containers! Thousands of them! As far as the eye could see! Full of exotic stuff like trousers, transistor radios and illegal immigrants. How could you not like containers?

All this for three quid, with a pork pie, a curly-wurly and a bottle of Corona for lunch. Magic.

How times have changed. No. 2 Daughter, AKA the garrulous MiniGrump, has just booked herself on her school's latest trip. They're spending ten days or so in sunny Thailand. Yes, Thailand. We have remortgaged Grumpy Towers and sold off a few superfluous organs to pay for it, so she's off!

Why Thailand? She's studying Buddhism. Therefore it makes absolute sense to head to the heart of Buddhism, right? Let's tease that logic out. She's studying French. Are they planning a sensible day jaunt to Calais, where they can also stock up on cheap booze and unpasteurised cheese? No. She's studying art. Are they popping up to the National Gallery to look at Great Art, or Tate Modern to look at blank walls and building materials posing as Great Art? No.

So what's behind the tour of places exotic? After attending the parent's talk I got to the bottom of it. It turns out the kiddies on the trip must be accompanied by teachers at a ratio of five to one. And are those teachers paying? What do you think? They told us they'll be working the whole time. I suppose someone has to keep them away from the drugs and the ladyboys. Nice work if you can get it, eh?

But economics aside it looks pretty fabulous. She gets to ride on an elephant! Learn Thai dancing! Ride the uniquely polluted rivers of Bangkok! Be bitten by strange and ferocious insects! She can't help gloating at us but I remind her that she's never had a whole morning out at Heathrow. At least not without actually taking a flight. Ha.

But the kicker is this. One of the teachers stood up at the end and said, in the spirit of Copenhagen, they want to offset their carbon emissions for the trip. They're going to invest in a marijuana farm in the Gambia or something, which will absorb simply heaps of CO2. To that end, could we all cough up an extra thirty pounds?

Hold on. Reduce emissions like this: visit the perfectly nice Buddhist temple in Morecambe Bay. They can stay there for a week. That way they avoid the enormous aeroplane and the luxury layover in Dubai. I suggested it and got a frosty 'no'. No explanation given, but I suspect it's because there aren't many elephants there, and it's not very sunny in Morecambe Bay in February.

So Thailand it is. But they can take their thirty pounds and shove it where the sun don't shine. And I don't mean the fridge.

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1 - And it was my only ever school trip, so by definition it was my favourite.