I turned my student house into a series of bushtucker trials to become the Queen of the castle

With Gi fletcher being named queen of the castle in this series of ‘I’m a Celeb’, I felt despondent. I was happy to see her win, of course. She was consistently fabulous, but her victory made me self-reflect. I mean, god! She is bestselling author and she is married to a member of McFly, both of which are life goals I hope to one day achieve.

I felt inspired to start manifesting my future around her achievements, and her new title as “Queen of the Castle” seemed like a sustainable way to start. (For some reason? In hindsight, I think I could have focused on actually passing my English lit and Creative writing degree and made actual productive strives to better my future… oh well.) So I turned my student house into the welsh celebrity castle, and challenged my housemates to a very intense game of ‘I’m a Student, Get Me Out of Here’ in bid to be crowned the new royal of Lancaster.

Scale the stairway

In line with the beginning of every I’m a Celeb series, I felt the first task must be loosely based around throwing ourselves out of helicopters. Although hurtling off the top floor of our four-story house was pretty much out of the question, I did think we could make use of the ungodly number of stairs.

Therefore, the first task was called ‘scale the stairway.’ We had to crab crawl down the stairs, taking breaks at each landing to complete 10 star jumps and 10 spins. The house mate who completed this the fastest would get five points, the second fastest would get four points and so on.

I could sense the intensity of the competition in the faces of my friends, and it filled me with the most extreme desire to win. Not only for me, or for Gi, or to inevitably get the attention of a McFly member, but for womankind. For the first time this year, I felt the feminist responsibility of being the only girl in my household. I had to win now, it was a political necessity.

One by one we threw ourselves down the stairs, feeling the foundations of the house shake around us. Muscle cramp paired with wrist pain coupled to make it a surprisingly difficult game, but we all managed it in respectable times. I didn’t win, but there was still opportunity to make up my points, because it was time to move onto the next ‘I’m a Student’ challenge.

The ‘I’m a Student’ challenge

For the sake of equality, I had to stay out of this game. On a collection of flash card’s I wrote out some questions about my housemates, some shot related forfeits, some ‘bushtucker’ pass cards, some ‘extra point’ cards, and some point deduction cards.

I lay them out face down on my bedroom floor, and with two of us pulling an exercise resistance band tight, one by one we threw ourselves into the floor, fighting the pull of the elastic. We had to grab whatever cards we could on each go, and answer the questions/do the forfeits we picked.

It was surprisingly difficult to fight against the strength of the band, so it took them all a few times to reach the cards. (Also, the fake student-budget bungee we created was actually really funny to use.)

The bushtucker trial

Next was probably the most dreaded part of the whole evening, the bushtucker trial. We did two rounds. One with liquids, One with solid foods.

The first round we were all blindfolded, and gained three points for each correctly guessed liquid. We were probably shotting more than we have cumulatively throughout the whole of uni. Spoonfuls of vinegar, mustards, spirits, sauces, spices, oils, cottage cheese, onion, lemon juice, salt, and sardines were thrown back and we all took them like champs. The points were rising and the chance of victory was slipping from my hands.

The final stages consisted of more Lancaster uni related challenges, and in line with missing the offers at Sugar, we all downed a VK as quickly as possible. The three slowest drinkers then had to compete against each other in a second session of downing. A few other competitive drinking games occurred, and then we added up the leader board.

Okay, so I didn’t win. Becoming Lancaster’s answer to Gi Fletcher never happened. But I did come third, but I guess I could try and give being a Lancaster uni Vernon kay a good go.

Related stories recommended by this writer:

I am spending quarantine in the box room and it’s not great

I broke the law on campus and found the real consequences of being a criminal at uni

We transformed our bedrooms into Lancs campus bars, and went on a ‘house crawl’