At my "prep" school, where I became a boarder at the age of nine, boys were divided into six squads, named after the Dominions, the first self governing countries of the Commonwealth, the new name for the British Empire. Viz: Australia, Canada, Ceylon, India, New Zealand, Pakistan and South Africa.
I was allocated to the New Zealand squad and had a Kiwi badge sewn on to my uniform cream sweater by one of the under-matrons, whose predominant duty was to darn up the holes in our woollen socks.
The squads competed with each other, week by week. The week's top team was the first to leave the dining room after breakfast.
Each boy was awarded ten points a week - and extra for winning a race or... I can't remember many of the different ways on could earn extra points (We're talking here about the 1950s). You cold lose points if you were naughty.
"Naughty" included not marking the List with a tick or a cross.
It worked like this: After breakfast, when your squad left the dining room, you lined up on a bench in the Common Room - the top squad nearest and to the left of the Master in charge. When he called out your name (in last week's point order) you went to one of the toilet cublicles and tried to shit.
A tick meant you'd had a bowel movement. A cross meant you handn't - this meant a spoonful of cod liver oil the next evening before Lights Out.
It was easy to remember to tick. But a cross felt a little shameful. Once or twice I lied and put a tick. More than once or twice I forgot to put a mark on the list. This meant losing three points - plus the ten bonus points we were all given for not losing points. 13 points in all.
So, when I forgot to declare that I hadn't shitted, it had a disastrous effect on New Zealand's squad ranking. It meant that, the next week we would have to sit in the dining room longer after breakfast. Hold our shit in longer. Which, anyhow for me, meant I was even less likely to shit when my name was eventually called. Which meant shame, and possibly forgetting to mark the list, which meant losing 13 points again, which meant.............
