Squad Duties

I happened to mention to my kids a Toye room the other day and of course they had no idea what I was talking about. However it set me thinking of school days again and not so much working in the Toyes but cleaning them on morning squad duties.

In North we had two Toye rooms “Brown” and “Green” I seem to remember. We worked in pairs and had to put all the chairs up on the toyes then move them all to one end of the room then dust and sweep the floor before moving them all to the other side of the room in order to clean that half. The whole job had to be done in about 45 minutes and then was inspected by a prefect who used to rub his finger around the window ledges or sweep the floor with a duster to see if the tiniest bit of dirt had been left.

In North other squad duties included cleaning either the front or back stairs, the main hall, polishing pipes in the showers, cleaning the changing rooms, preparing and serving in the dining room, preparing the milk for breakfast, sweeping the back yard and correcting all the clocks – there must have been others but I can’t recall now what they all were – only that the prefects had a lovely time showing us what we missed and making us do it all again.

All this brings other memories such as the terms CDICR (clothes down in changing rooms), WPBNE (waste paper bin not emptied) and TAGS (loose sheets showing under the beds), all expressions for point losers written up on little pink slips of paper after morning dormitory inspections. Did other houses have the same?