Line up Line up - its multivitamin time.

Early mornings at the hotel were pretty much always the same. Even though I lived the furthest away, I often got their first, followed by a succession of blurry eyed, sleepy people, usually complaining/ gossiping about what people had got up to the night before (he wee-ed in my shoes, she was such a total bitch, I woke up and they were shagging RIGHT NEXT TO ME) On more that one occasion I was shown pictures of people  who were so drunk they had fallen asleep naked and their loving friends had taken pictures of them, sometimes there was one person in the picture, sometimes there was two. Coffee machines were turned on, cereal was transferred into bowls and I went to wake up the one person who had been too drunk to turn on their alarm (by the end of the season I had woken up every member of hotel staff). On the worst occasion one boy had to be physically dragged out of bed before he would wake.

One morning I stood in the kitchen and looked around me at the mass of grey , miserable looking faces, all moving at the speed of snails and suddenly I had a thought, every single person in the room (except me) looked close to death and worryingly lacking in several vital vitamins. If they died or were rushed to hospital, it would be me who would have to call their mothers to tell them their child's constant drinking and inability to eat fruit and vegetables when not being forced by a loving parent had taken the ultimate toll.

My own mother was very worried about vitamin deficiency and had been sending me a pack of multi vitamins on average every three weeks. And as a dutiful daughter and not much fancying a visit to a French hospital had been taking them regularly.

Chef was the worst of the lot, his skin had actually turned slate grey. Not wanting to deal the death of a staff member I knew I had to do something and I hunted out the bottle of vitamins that had come in the post from England the day before.

I lined everyone up in the kitchen, chef first and gave each of them a vitamin shot. I was a bit worried that their bodies wouldn't be able to cope with the sudden rush of healthy things and would start immediately to reject the tablets. Fortunately this didn't happen. Some tried to ridicule me for thinking they needed it but nevertheless they all took it, with considerably less persuading and threatening than I was expecting.

Through out the day, the story spread and different staff members sort me out in secret, like I was some kind of drug pusher, so they could have one too.

The childcare manager, who didn't eat any fruit and veg anyway, didn't like them because they were orange flavoured. The rep had two.