Stacey: My Story So Far

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Stacey: My Story So Far Page 22

by Stacey Solomon


  Me and Kayla were given the next challenge, against Shaun and Aggro. We turned up thinking it would be really fun, but when we got there we were faced with a massive pool of stinking green gunk. Oh no! we thought.

  Two of us would be going in there while two stayed dry on the side. Me and Kayla looked at each other. ‘I don’t mind. I’ll do it,’ I said.

  The challenge was for me and Aggro to put on frog suits and splash across the pond to Kayla and Shaun, who had to squirt green slimy ‘frogspawn’ into our frogs’ mouths while we sat on rotating lily pads. When the pouches in our mouths were full, we had to splash back across the pool and tip the slime into a tube.

  You can imagine what I was thinking: Great, I’m against Aggro in a physical challenge, and I’m dressed up in a frog outfit! I didn’t let it get me down, though. ‘You signed yourself up for this,’ I told myself. ‘You can’t pull out of it now. Just do it and beat Aggro. You can do it!’

  It was really difficult, because there were logs all the way across this gunky pool and you had to climb over them to get to either side. I raced hard against Aggro and I wasn’t that far behind him, but he was faster and stronger than me. ‘Quick, keep going. Come on, we’ll get there,’ I kept saying to myself. I tried so hard, but we still lost.

  When I pulled myself up onto the rocks at the end, I was panting hard and my whole body was shaking. Argh! I was covered in frogspawn.

  Kayla burst into tears. ‘That was so horrible!’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to squirt frogspawn in your mouth. It was going all over your face. You couldn’t breathe. I can’t believe you had to do that!’

  She was crying her eyes out. ‘Why aren’t you sad?’ she asked me. ‘That was horrible. They made me squirt things in your face.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. It wasn’t nice, but she was from America, where I’ve been told that I’m a Celebrity is a lot tamer than the UK version. They’re cushioned over there, apparently, because people just won’t tolerate the kinds of trials you see in England.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she kept saying. ‘You guys are just horrible.’ She was genuinely upset and felt really guilty. It was so sweet.

  If I’d been in her position, I probably would have felt the same, so from that perspective I was glad I’d done it, because I didn’t feel guilty. Before I went on the show, I told myself I wouldn’t say no to anything. I promised myself I’d do everything. If I’d been voted out the first week and I hadn’t done anything difficult, I would have been really disappointed in myself. If you set yourself a challenge and then don’t bother with it, what’s the point?

  The girls’ camp didn’t win any meals for three days, so I didn’t eat. There were rice and beans, but after a while I just couldn’t eat them any more. The beans were like baked beans without the sauce and they tasted of fart – so gross and disgusting! The rice was wholegrain, plain and chewy. It was so stodgy that you’d start gagging while you were chewing it. You were trying to swallow it because you were hungry, but you ended up choking on disgusting, stodgy food.

  After Gillian ate the vomit fruit, we were given a couple of possum sausages. No one else liked them, but I loved them. They were really good. ‘Yes, I’m going to eat them all,’ I said when the others turned them down.

  The next day, Camp Sheila joined Camp Bruce. Great, finally we’re going to get some food, I thought. We hadn’t seen the boys for three days and I was really happy to see them all. They were fed and content and had been having fun, and the whole day revolved around us meeting each other. There wasn’t a challenge or a trial because the football was on in the UK and I’m a Celebrity wasn’t going to be on that night.

  The best moment of every day came at sundown, when we saw the rope in the trees above us moving. It meant that someone was attaching our food to the rope to lower it down to us; dinner was coming. We became like vultures, staring at the rope at the same time every day, waiting for it to twitch. Then a bag would come floating through the sky towards the camp. ‘Our food’s here!’ we’d cry.

  The food came in a furry skin bag. There was never anything particularly nice, except for those possum sausages and the one time we had shrimps. Often there would be a whole slab of meat in there – kangaroo or crocodile or whatever. You had to hack at it to divide it up and cook it. It was gross.

  Linford was the best when it came to preparing the meat. Nobody else wanted to deal with it, because they didn’t know what to do. How would I know which is the good bit of the meat and what to get rid of and what to keep? Linny really knew what he was doing, so we left him to do his magic. I got to cut and prepare all the vegetables, which I enjoyed. It was something to do at least. After eating rice and beans for days, it was so yummy to have a bit of flavour at last. When there were garlic cloves in the bag, we were in heaven.

  I thought about food all the time. There must have been so much footage of us saying, ‘Oh, M&Ms! Oh, Walkers Crisps! Oh, I could really hack some white chocolate!’ It was our main topic of conversation throughout the day.

  I guess that’s because, the moment you’re deprived of something, it’s all you can think of. After ten days we were saying stupid things like, ‘Do you remember Coke? Do you remember peanuts?’ Like we’d been away for years. ‘What about chocolate?’ It was just ridiculous and a little bit pathetic. We were obsessed. We were constantly asking for stuff: ‘A bit of tea or coffee? A bit of sugar? Please can we have a tiny bit of sugar or jam? Then we could make rice pudding.’

  When we weren’t talking about food, we sometimes had debates sitting on logs around the fire. They’d start with someone expressing an opinion and somebody else saying, ‘Wait a minute!’ Then other people would join in. ‘I agree with him,’ or, ‘I agree with her.’ Most of the time, it was really interesting to listen to everyone’s opinions.

  One night, Linford and I had a real disagreement. It didn’t make any difference to how much I loved him, though, views or no views. He seemed to think that although it’s fine for men to sleep around, it’s not acceptable for women. He said that society allows men to behave like that, because that’s just how they are, whereas a woman who sleeps around is branded a slag.

  I didn’t agree with him in any way, shape or form. I think if a man is doing it, he should be branded just as much as a woman is – if anyone’s going to get branded that is.

  ‘It’s a male society, unfortunately. Women can’t expect to do what men do,’ he said.

  ‘What the hell?’ I said. ‘Don’t you dare!’ I laughed and pushed him sideways.

  ‘Women are meant to be more decent than men,’ he said a bit later on. Oh my God!

  I don’t believe there should be any stigma surrounding it. You are who you are. If you want to sleep with loads of people, it’s your life and your prerogative. Man or woman, it shouldn’t make a difference. We all come from the same place and we all go to the same place, so there’s no difference in my eyes. Everybody is equal, whether you’re a man or a woman.

  Linford began to elaborate on his argument, which got me even more frustrated. He said that the problems had all started with the women’s liberation movement and women campaigning for equal rights. He seemed to be implying that there should be one rule for men and another for women.

  ‘Hang on a minute,’ I said, ‘this is even worse than what you just said to me. If you’re saying that you would tell your daughter she’s only allowed to do certain things, but to your son you’ll say he can do whatever he wants, then I think you’re wrong and a bad person for doing that. I think that’s awful.’

  There is nothing I feel stronger about than everyone being treated the same. If I had a boy and a girl, I would tell them both, ‘You do whatever you want to do and be happy. You’ve got ninety years maximum. Enjoy it. Do what you can in the time you’ve got.’

  It really bugs me that men still get paid more than women, and that a man often gets offered a job over a woman. Why is that? Women are just as clever and just as capable. I’m not a women’s rights
activist, but I don’t believe in opinions like the ones Linford expressed and I find it really difficult to hear them. He kept saying that it was just society’s view and that he wasn’t being sexist, but he also said that you can’t separate yourself from the way society looks at things.

  If I’m set a challenge against a man, I’ll do my utmost to be just as good, if not better, than he is. There are too many people sitting there saying, ‘But a man can do it better.’ Men are at the top, so it’s easy for them to sit there and hire other men. When they hire women, it’s because women are loyal and less likely to try to take over their business. If I take on women, I can control them, they think. Not all men are like that, of course. My dad is the complete opposite. He would rather have Karen go back to work while he does the cooking and cleaning. There are men out there like my dad, but they’re the minority.

  It annoys me that women are fed the idea that they’re physically and mentally weaker than men. I would never sit by silently while someone said that. I’ll put my views across strongly, because I really believe in them.

  ‘I don’t believe that men dominate and you get more rights than me. I choose to believe I rule my own world,’ I told Linford.

  ‘No you don’t, men rule the world,’ he said. ‘It’s your life, but men rule the world.’

  It was incredible to me that there were other women listening to him who didn’t argue. How can a woman sit there and hear all that without saying anything? How could they let him say, ‘Women shouldn’t, women mustn’t, they can’t’?

  No, no, no! To that I say, ‘I will and I have! I’ll do anything I want to do, thank you.’ We’ve all got a brain. Why can’t we do whatever we want to do?

  Jenny Eclair, who’d joined the camp later, told him off a few times: ‘I’m getting quite cross with you, Linford. That’s the kind of male opinion I hate.’ I think she was too angry to get into a proper debate about it.

  I said, ‘As a friend, I’m going to tell you that you need to stop right there. What you are saying totally goes against the way society is currently moving. I don’t think you should think like that and I don’t think you should force those views on your kids, either. That’s going backwards socially and back in time. We’re all trying to move forward and progress and get somewhere, but you’re talking about going back to the bad old ways. That’s crazy.’

  Whereas Jenny was getting pretty annoyed, I don’t get angry or swear when I’m having a debate. I get emotional and loud about things, but I’m not angry. ‘We’re going to just have to agree to disagree,’ Linford said, and we did.

  ‘If that’s your opinion, I don’t agree and I don’t ever want to hear it,’ I told him. ‘But I’m telling you now that it’s the wrong way to think. I won’t tell anyone how to be, but that is so wrong. I feel I’m just as good as you, woman or man. You could have won a million gold medals, but I feel I’m just as good as you. End of story.’

  I can’t understand why women accept these kinds of views from men and don’t say or do anything. If every woman said, ‘Hang on, don’t take me for an idiot, I’m just as good as him,’ then we’d move forward a lot quicker. We need to get people to take us seriously so that we can really get somewhere. We need to speak out so we can get better jobs and be paid as much as men are. If I didn’t get a job because of sexism, I would never, ever take it lying down. I would take my case to court and fight. Unfortunately, there are too many people who can’t be bothered. I wish they’d stand up and say something.

  The fact is that there are just as many women as there are men, so we really can change things if we want to. We have the bargaining power as men need us to reproduce. What are they going to do without us? Have babies by themselves?

  It’s strange how people think it’s weird for a woman to be a feminist, when all it means is that she believes in equal rights for men and women. When people hear someone’s a feminist, they talk about them like it’s a disease or as if they’re mentally ill, and a lot of girls seem to think that it means someone’s a lesbian or something. That’s rubbish. It’s simply someone who believes she’s every bit as good as a man.

  At school I learned about the FTSE 100 and how men have most of the top jobs. We weren’t learning about women’s rights; it was just general knowledge. I remember looking at the figures and thinking they were ridiculous. Why is it like that? I wondered. I couldn’t understand it.

  To me, women’s rights are no different to civil rights. Everyone should be treated the same. We saw what happened when a whole country started to believe in the superiority of one race, before and during World War II, with the Holocaust. What would have happened if the Nazis had succeeded? We’d have one race of narrow-minded people who would all be the same. It would be so hideous!

  Things have changed for women, but they could get even better if people were more open and less worried about having an opinion. People seem to be too concerned about expressing their views these days, in case they say the wrong thing or haven’t got enough hard information to back themselves up. But I think that if you genuinely believe in something, then nobody will beat you in an argument.

  Of course, Linny genuinely believed his argument and thought he was right, so I was never ever going to change his mind. That’s why we had to agree to disagree. By the end of it, though, he was saying that it wasn’t necessarily his view, just the way society looked at things, which I don’t agree with.

  At the end of the day, me and Linford are from different worlds. He’s fifty and his views are old school – the product of his background and religion. Mine is a more modern opinion, which conflicts with everything he says. I understand that it’s quite hard for someone like him to hear what I have to say, just as it’s hard for me to hear his old-fashioned views. It’s a clash of opinions.

  I’m so far removed from his generation. I know a lot of girls who are doing their own thing now, going out and getting what they want and working to build their chosen careers. These are girls from poor backgrounds, with no money, not rich kids with connections. They say, ‘I’m going to do what I want to do and I’m going to make a success of it.’ It makes me so happy to hear them say it, because that’s the way I believe we should live our lives.

  Chapter 16

  ‘Where’s Bob?’ I asked.

  ‘Medic Bob’ is the man who comes over before every trial on I’m a Celebrity and says, ‘Hello, I’m Bob. G’day. Today you are going to encounter a lot of animals, but don’t worry, none of them will hurt you, but they may bite you.’

  You think, Oh my God! Why are you even here, Bob? You’re just making it worse.

  What I feared the most were spiders, but Bob explained to me that because spiders are arachnids, they can’t be used in trials as much as cockroaches and mealworms, which are a lot more common. Did you know that a female cockroach that gives birth on 1 January will have six million direct descendants by 31 December a year later? So that’s why there are so many of them!

  Oh, the things I learned. I used to question the rangers all the time, so you can imagine how bored I was. Still, it was good to hear that arachnids only came out in certain trials. Surely that meant I wouldn’t come face to face with spiders every time? That’s what I was hoping anyway.

  At the start, Gillian did a trial every day. Then it came to a harness activity, which Gillian was excluded from participating in, so I was picked instead. I was hoping it wouldn’t be too bad. Either way, though, I was determined to come back with all the stars I could. We hadn’t eaten much in days and we were hungry!

  I tried to prepare myself for the worst and started going through the drill in my head again. ‘You’ve got to get through this. You’ve got to do it,’ I told myself over and over again.

  In case of bugs, I covered up as much of my body as I could. I wore a vest, a T-shirt and a shirt, with the buttons done up to the top to stop anything getting inside, and I pulled my socks up over my trousers. I felt more and more uneasy as I waited for the trial to begin. I guess
ed they were sorting out the jungle creatures at the last minute, so they wouldn’t all crawl away. The anticipation was terrible.

  The longer I waited, the worse it got. I had no idea what was ahead of me and my imagination was running wild. ‘Stop thinking!’ I said to myself. ‘You’re going to be fine.’ I was in a right jittery state.

  I already knew that the trial was called ‘The Australian Job’. Because of the name, I was hoping I’d be driving cars, or jumping from car to car with my harness on – with no creepy crawlies involved. ‘Don’t worry, there won’t be any bugs,’ everyone said as I waved goodbye to them at the camp.

  Maybe there won’t be, I thought, trying desperately to be optimistic. Maybe it will just be a fun trial?

  Finally, I was told to walk up a nearby hill, where Ant and Dec would describe what the challenge was. ‘Don’t turn around,’ the director said. So the trial was behind me, then. I really wanted to turn around as I trudged up the hill to my doom, but I did as I was told.

  Ant and Dec were smiling when I arrived at the top. ‘How are you?’ Dec asked.

  ‘Oh, wonderful,’ I said.

  ‘Are you being sarcastic?’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said. ‘I wouldn’t hug me, I stink in every way,’ I said, hugging them both.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ they asked.

  ‘I’m smiling, but I’m not happy.’

  ‘Do you want to know what the trial is?

  ‘No, but go on, tell me anyway.’

  ‘OK, this is the Australian Job,’ Ant said. ‘Behind us you can see a bus, which is teetering over the edge of a quarry.’ I turned to look. There was a big bus hanging off the edge of a cliff. It looked like the Scooby Doo bus. My heart leapt to my throat. Was I going on that bus? It could topple at any minute. But I knew that wasn’t all. What else? I thought.

 

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