It was all harmless fun. That’s what I said to my parents at home when I called them to tell them I had passed the ‘initiation test’ to become part of the hockey society. I didn’t actually play hockey. I mean I did a couple of times but I had no interest in the sport aspect of it. I wanted into the hockey social club because they went out every Wednesday and most of my friends were in it.
‘Hiya, Mam, you all right?’
‘Yeah, we’re all great, I’ve put you on that speaker thing so Dad can hear you too.’
‘You alreet, kid?’
‘Yeah, you sound concerned. Of course I’m fine.’ I was very hungover, eating 99p noodles out of a plastic container but I wasn’t going to let on.
‘Just your mam seen you had all rips in your clothes last night on that book of faces.’
‘Facebook, Dad. Mam, I’ve told you not to stalk me on that.’
‘I can’t help it. Anyway, I clicked onto a few people in the picture and I seen a picture and it looked like you had a bottle of wine Sellotaped to your hand.’
‘I am fine, honestly. I’ll explain, please don’t freak out. So you have to be allowed into the hockey society by all the second and third years. They are in charge of the first years, us freshers, that’s why we all had to dress as slaves and then we each do a challenge to prove ourselves worthy. That’s why my clothes had rips in because I didn’t want to actually spend any money on an outfit so I just ripped up a really baggy white top, wrote “slave” on the back and wore ripped tights with it.’
‘Bloody hell, Scarlett, it sounds like a demonic cult.’
‘No, Dad, it’s just like when you get asked to down a pint at the football. Anyway coz they know me and Sarah are best friends, they set up a challenge for both of us. It was a pint glass filled with port, red wine, red VK and this red sambuca shizz. We had to drink it all, but not through a straw – through a tampon.’
Looking back, I suppose this was my first ever Bushtucker Trial in a way.
‘And these are the people who are going to be future doctors, lawyers, politicians and teachers? They sound barbaric!’
‘No honestly, it’s a good laugh, trust me. One girl had to eat mealworms so I got off lightly.’
‘But that doesn’t explain why you had a bottle of wine stuck to your hand.’
‘Right, well one of the rules they had is you are not allowed to go to the toilet while anyone is getting initiated. I told Sarah I wasn’t peeing in a bucket in front of anyone so I was going to sneak out. Well, they noticed didn’t they, so they Sellotaped a bottle of red wine to my hand as a punishment.’
What I didn’t tell them is that I couldn’t leave until I’d drunk the whole bottle. I mean, it should be made illegal really. How I was still standing, I just don’t know. (At least I didn’t have to do what David Cameron was allegedly made to do. If you don’t know what I mean Google ‘Pig-gate’.)
I mean, how bad is this? Jess, who I lived with, is lactose intolerant. So at the initiation ceremony, they gave her a bottle of milk and she had to drink it. I mean, really! They knew that – that’s why they gave her it. It’s evil, isn’t it? In the second year, I didn’t go to the initiations. I felt too bad putting the freshers through what we all went through. Some of those girls were really, really mean. But the thing is, regardless of that, the hockey society still organised really good Wednesday nights out. Swings and roundabouts, really.
So what would happen was, the social sec – my friend Chloe – would plan the Wednesday nights out. You would just get a text out of the blue:
‘This Wednesday meet-up point: 7p.m. outside Salt & Pepper Takeaway. Theme: television. You have been given the character: a Banana in Pyjamas. C x’
Other people would turn up dressed as characters from Baywatch or The Simpsons. My friend had to dress up as Lisa, so she painted herself all in yellow and ended up not getting the deposit back from her landlord because half the walls in the house got stained. In hindsight, I wish Gogglebox was out at that time because I could have just walked around with a chair strapped to my back and sat down whenever I wanted. That would have been a perfect night for me.
People went all out on those fancy-dress nights. One night we had to go as something dressed as the letter F. One lass went as a full-on fence. She’d got a big long bit of cardboard and cut it out, so it was like a white picket fence. She had to walk sideways into all the bars.
You would get slagged off by the others if you hadn’t made an effort. There was a lot of pressure. There was a girl called Fiona, and at the F party, she came as herself. The rest were like, ‘That’s shit. You need to go home, mate.’
The most memorable night out for me was the night I got burgled while I was dressed as a burglar. Oh my God, it was so ironic. One of the hockey club’s nights out was a ‘cops and robbers’ theme. All the first years had to go as robbers. So I wore a black and white stripy jumper and a little mask, complete with a swag bag. We were in the club Tokyo, and Sarah and I were shattered. I just wanted to go home. Zoe and Jess said that they would follow, but we went to the kebab shop on the
