I awoke to people murmuring and fidgeting about; one or two people were sitting up bleary-eyed with straggly “bed-hair”. The thing that struck me straight away was how cold it was in the room. It was probably as close to freezing as it could possibly be, indoors. I pulled my meagre bedcover and blanket around myself and curled up in a futile effort to get warm.As more and more people got up I felt as though I really ought to make a move to get up soon, but I felt so lethargic and so cold; I really wasn’t cut out for early mornings. I then noticed the Irish lad, Richard in the top bunk across the room, sitting up mumbling under his breath. We looked at each other and said our good mornings.
‘I really need to get up at some point,’ I said, still wrapped in my covers, my teeth chattering.
‘I tell you one thing we need’, said Richard in his strong Irish accent, not moving from his sitting up position; ‘a fecking heater!’
I think I may have been the last of the twenty into the shower that morning. As I made my way there, Richard was coming back the other way, his hair soaking wet and looking white in the face; he was visibly shaking and tight from the cold.
‘Nice shower?’ I enquired.
‘Jesus…you wouldn’t get this for fecking murder,’ he said, ‘I’ve never been so fecking cold in all me life,’ before his walk quickened back to the room.
I then endured less than five minutes of freezing cold water that supposedly went under the guise of a shower.
