Diary of an Assistant Mistress (2 page)

Well, I found it hard enough to concentrate on work from then on but I doubt if my pupils noticed the difference. It has been a long term.

Tuesday 12th January

I suppose the point is that Emma is not my favourite pupil - or for that matter anyone else's - but because she came to me I am inclined to feel strongly about the crisis she is going through. I am certain that if the results of the test are positive she will go on the run rather than tell her mother.

Her parents are separated and her mother has twice broken up with her current boyfriend. Mother and daughter are very physically similar (slim, tall, raven-haired, tight-skinned) and I have often caught Emma - who I do not even teach now - employing mannerisms which she is clearly trying out in an imperfect imitation of mum.

In some ways she seems to be much closer to her mother than her mother is to her. I suspect mum would be most upset about the inconvenience - especially if it made it harder for her to get back together with her boyfriend from whom she broke up (again) about six weeks ago.

[A horrible suspicion has just dawned on me but on the other hand I have never liked Emma's stepfather and I have a morbid tendency to think the worst of the stepfather of a girl who has flirted with every man on the staff - even Pat, the mad Welsh Maths teacher (every school has one) who is her head of year and whom I really ought to tell about the situation.]

The fact is that I did not tell Pat anything today because I did not see him and this is hardly a fit subject for a memo.

Wednesday 13th January

The wretched toaster has burnt out, the water has been cut off and I had completely forgotten that there is a parents' evening tonight.

In the sort of frame of mind you can imagine, I set off for work this morning - daring the Skoda to make my day. When I arrived the usual detritis cascaded out of my pigeon hole - I expect a real pigeon hole has rather more pleasant contents.

Among the bin-fodder was a glossy pamphlet explaining the National Curriculum. It contained the memorable assertion that thanks to the National Curriculum all 14 year olds will now be able to present both sides of an argument in an articulate manner. I look forward to this as many of mine have a job presenting one side of an argument without resorting to belting each other. I read recently that during the final battle for Berlin, Hitler was issuing orders to units which were already destroyed because nobody had the nerve to tell him they had been: exhortations to fight to the last man when they had already done so. The National Cur is a bit like that - orders to the dead. The cost of the glossy leaflet could have provided a couple of books for my fourth years this morning - as it was they had to share again.

At least the water was back on by the time I got home for a brief sojourn before the parents' evening.

The parents' evening was not as bad as I anticipated - they never are. I had one noteworthy experience. I was trying to tell Mr Mason that his son was inattentive when I noticed that he was looking round the room and not listening to a word I said. I wondered what effect I would have had if I had started spouting nonsense or perhaps describing my underwear to him. I decided against this latter course of action because a) he might suddenly start paying attention and b) he might not!

Again I have not spoken to our resident insane mathematician and I recall that it is tomorrow that Emma gets her results.

Thursday 14th January

Damn this car to hell and back again - as if the wretched rustbucket could ever get so far. I laughed when people told me Skodas were unreliable - I tended to assume it was the propaganda of the ailing British car industry - but mine is obviously a Friday afternoon - or maybe Sunday midnight - Skoda.

No news from or about Emma. I checked the registers to make sure that she was in school - at least at registration - but that does not tell us much.

I persuaded Dave to take the damned car to the garage and I will ring them for an estimate tomorrow.

Friday 15th January

Emma, it turns out, is not pregnant. She did not need to take a pregnancy test either - she knew perfectly well she wasn't pregnant... although she had had "unprotected intercourse" not with a sixth former but with "a married man" who has not been in touch with her since the event.

She soon changed the subject to talk about two friends of hers. Since a routine lecture about the consequences of taking lifts from strangers they have taken to coming in to school early so that they can walk away from the school and hitch lifts from strangers.

In an apparently unrelated remark she then mentioned that her mother's boyfriend is now "definitively" out of the picture. She then made some fairly coarse remarks about him and then she shut up very suddenly with a gesture - an imperious turning of the head - which seemed reminiscent of one of her mother's but was rather spoilt by her acne I felt.

So what am I to make of all this? I have set it down to clarify it and I still find it puzzling. Is she hinting that Daniel (her mum's occasional paramour) screwed her and that she used the whole business of the pregnancy test to send him running scared without having him locked up ... or is that just what she would like me to think - she has a liking for self-dramatization.

Was the story about her two friends true? If she wanted to get them in trouble she would have told somebody else. Or was she just putting me off the scent?

Saturday 16th January

Today I started work on National Cur Standard Attainment Tests for Lower School. I thought profiles were a pain in the ass - I was underestimating the amount of barbed-wire loo paper the powers-that-be could fling at us. It is not very surprising that teachers are leaving the profession faster than nuns from an orgy.

Teaching has been almost entirely supplanted by paper-work. Speaking of paper-work, my fourth year IT class produced a special mock-up newspaper for me yesterday suggesting what I would do if I became prime minister and suggesting also that they realised that I needed cheering up. They are not a very bright lot in many ways but they have many endearing qualities.

I discussed Emma's situation with James and he suggests that it is none of my business now that it is clear that Emma is not "in the club". This got us on to the subject of euphemisms for pregnancy which in turn got us on to euphemisms for sex which in turn ... do I have to draw a diagram?

Sunday 17th January

George and Edie for dinner. George was full of annoyance with Oz, who has been off for two days with a bug of some sort. George of course is never ill and assumes that anyone who is off is skiving - doubly so if George has to cover.

George and Edie only had eyes for each other. More precisely, Edie was wearing a short skirt and George spent the whole time looking at her legs. They look like perfectly ordinary, rather muscular legs to me but for George they are obviously a source of considerable joy. I wonder why she wears white socks all the time.

James has made some totally prurient suggestions about the above and he then produced a blindfold he wanted me to wear. I think ƒbNine and a Half Weeks has a lot to answer for. I consented to the blindfold - anything is better than the policewoman's uniform again - the effect is rather similar to having the lights out. I warned him there would be dire consequences if I heard anything remotely like an ice-cube clinking.

Monday 18th January

A Monday like any other Monday, full of exhortations to my fifth years to at least produce some coursework so I will have something to mark; exhortations to my third years to listen to each other with their ears instead of their mouths and exhortations to the Interactive Video to stop flickering and start working. All about equally effective.

To round off this perfect day we had a department meeting. Oz the all-powerful had no real reason for calling the meeting except that it was on the timetable of meetings for the year and so we had to have a meeting. I was sitting opposite George and because, of course, Edie is not a member of our department he spent his time looking at my legs. There is not much I could do about this - wear a longer skirt I suppose, but I could hardly pop out during the meeting and slip into something more comfortable.

Nothing of any consequence was discussed at this meeting, in fact even as I write I cannot clearly remember what was discussed. This is a little unfortunate because I am supposed to take the minutes. There was a lengthy discussion on whether it was a good idea to hold meetings when we had nothing to discuss. Oz remained loyally silent, George spoke at some length and Clair made the suggestion that we should all go home and just submit minutes to Snooksie the Head suggesting that some worthy discussion of the National Cur had occurred. I hazarded a guess at who would end up doing the fictional minutes, but I can hardly minute that. I will think of something.

The curse has come upon me, in much the same way as it came upon the Lady of Shallott. Of course this means that James will be wanting oral sex again

Monday 18th January continued

I was right, the bugger did want oral sex again. Still, the noun I just applied to him reminds me that it could be worse.

Tuesday 19th January

Torquemada again approached me about the assembly on the "Thaird Wairld" and if a combination of being downright rude and a simple negative do not convince him then I do not know what will.

I did ƒbLochinvar with my first years and got them to write modern versions of the story. I think the most interesting of these were the one in which Ellen uses Lochinvar as an excuse to get out of an arranged marriage and ditches him at the first opportunity and the one in which it is Ellen who turns up at the registry office on a Kowasaki and rides off with Lochinvar into the sunset. Some of the boys had him wasting the entire wedding party with a sub-machine gun.

After school I had some volunteers moving the desks in my room. This only serves to emphasise the fact that no matter how I reorganise the furniture the room is too damned small.

James wanted *guess what* again tonight but I was firm with him. Then he was firm with me and when we had finished role playing he negotiated a very quick wank on sole condition that he keep his hands to himself. Naturally he suggested that I tie him up but I insisted that this would not be necessary.

While I was performing this service - which would have cost him twenty quid elsewhere - and he was about to come; he broke the agreement by grabbing one of my breasts. I reminded him that the law now recognises marital rape and in any case - oops - it was too late now and here's a hanky.

Wednesday 20th January

I am beginning to like Wednesdays because I have no free periods and I know I can't be clobbered for cover. All teachers hate covering lessons. My own pet hates are drama - because the pupils always try it on and I have to start from basics and teach the first lesson for drama classes which consists largely of "You have to take your shoes off and work in bare feet otherwise the floor gets as dirty as you can see it has got because somebody else didn't which in turn means that your feet are going to get dirty ..." - and RE where Torquemada always has extensive wordprocessed notes on what he wants done - "How the Communists persecute Christians", "What nice white Christians are doing to combat leprosy among poor black heathens" and "The lessons of Saint Egbert for today."

Apart from my "who lumbered me with this group" third years, I have first and second years today which means that they are usually more enthusiastic and so am I. There are times when I forget the paperwork and endless meetings that teaching is all about and just revel in the classroom work which is tagged on as a sort of reward.

NUT meeting. This consisted of the chairman, treasurer and myself. They promptly made me secretary which means, of course, that I have to keep the minutes. I took notes of the discussion this time. It mainly consisted of advice from Region about what the LEA were going to do to us and very good reasons why we could not do anything about it. I often think that the NUT membership will never rise again after the defeat of our last program of "rolling strikes" in the eighties which ended by the unions rolling over and playing dead.

If James wants me to suck his cock, he can damned well do it himself. I only undertake to applaud if he succeeds.

Thursday 21st January

Today is the day on which I have two of my "who lumbered me with this group" third year classes. I have started an autobiography project with them and collected in the first chapters for marking today. Jesus wept!

Jane has obviously heeded my warning that bad things will happen if she fails to produce any written work and I reproduce part of her contribution as I received it:-

Tell me, o blessed National Cur, shall I tackle her sentence structure or her spelling first?

They don't all live lives like Jane (I am not ruling out the notion that she fantasizes) but many are equally grim in their own way. Take James Redbarn,

"I was born in Manchester and my real dad lives there. My mum and her boyfriend split up and I live with Mr and Mrs Redbarn who are very kid. When I am older I will live with my real dad. My worst time was in Scoresdale (a council holding centre for children likely to abscond - TN) where it was Mordor."

I told James I had a headache and he asked if this meant I didn't want sex. I said of course it did and he said, "Why didn't you say so?"

Friday 22nd January

On Friday I have a double free period in the afternoon. Now Friday afternoon is the time when both teachers and pupils are probably at their worst and least likely to concentrate. My timetable is OK otherwise, first and second years and a well-motivated Information Technology fourth year, so all depends on whether I have the free period or get clobbered for cover.

Today was a good day. I completed the third year marking. One of the girls wrote about her father indecently assaulting her and her mother being unable to do anything about it because she is too busy making a video of the proceedings, but I happen to know this is a wind-up because I overheard Melissa discussing what she would write in a fit of giggles with Helen (unless Melissa is double bluffing).