Diary of an Assistant Mistress (6 page)

Friday 26th February

Completed the dread reports. Saw Pat and bought him lunch but he didn't repeat his offer. Remembered with a jolt that the Men from the Ministry will be there on Monday.

Panic? Me?

James decided I was too tense and a couple of bottles of cheap Spanish plonk would solve the problem. I can only say that it is just as well we have Victor because Little Willie was flagging a bit and was about as hard as Geoffrey Howe. A bit like being ravaged by a dead sheep.

Now I am happy enough getting an orgasm with artificial assistance but James feels he has *failed* as a *man*. Stick to one bottle of plonk next time.

Saturday 27th February

Sainsbury's. The arm is definitely better but James came along to do the carrying anyway. I saw Tracy and Ali exchanging remarks at the checkout. They have not seen James and myself together before so they will be drawing all sorts of conclusions I imagine.

Sunday 28th February

3.00 am Why do I always lay awake worrying the night before returning to school after a holiday? It was just the same when I was at school myself. I suppose the joint prospect of Clare and the Men from the Ministry is the outside of enough.

Monday 29th February

The Men from the Ministry were there before anyone else this morning, filling the best spots in the car park with their expensive cars and clocking us all in. I assume they will be making notes of when we all leave too. May as well get a camp bed now.

Clare gave every impression that she had been written an apology script and read it rather badly. She was soon back to her loud prurient self I'm glad to say.

Oz has started smoking again and his nails look bitten. I tried to switch on the OHP in my room and was rather surprised to find that it had had the plug removed. I was fulminating about the amateur saboteurs of the school when Oz sheepishly admitted that he had been responsible. The plug on the downstairs TV had been broken and of course the school budget does not run to a plug. This is the kind of thing we have to hide from the Men from the Ministry. I will have to buy a plug out of my own money. I wonder how far Fords would get if they opened a new factory and told the workers they would have to find spare parts for any machinery which broke down?

Tuesday 1st March

Arrived at school to find most of my class were wearing black armbands. I wondered if the Head was dead but Julie told me that it was a national day of mourning for laboratory animals and she added with some glee that the biology department were furious and likely to give out detentions to anyone who wears them.

What to do? I am tempted to wear one myself because I hardly approve of cruelty to animals for the sake of new cosmetics and I know that computer simulations are often better than animal experiments. On the other hand I don't wear black armbands for people so it would merely look silly if I started to wear one for animals.

What decided me was listening to Helen and Mary taunting Tom for not wearing an armband. Tom is a quiet, ostensibly repressed individual who does not want to get involved in anything which might get him in trouble with his science teachers. I took the opportunity to suggest that they should be expressing their opinions not trying to impose them on others. Then Helen hadn't heard so she asked me to repeat what I'd said, I suggested she should have been listening and Mary started repeating to her a version of what I'd said. Then I had to correct Mary's stalinist amalgam and by this time the bell should have gone had it not been sabotaged by high-spirited sixth-formers so off they went.

Wednesday 2nd March

I set my seventh years a traditional exercise: "Remove the word 'nice' from the following, replacing it where necessary to make the description more vivid:-

"It was a nice day so I thought it would be nice to go for a nice walk. I went to the park. There were lots of nice people walking their nice dogs."

I use this because it looks as if it was made up for the purpose. In fact it was submitted to me as a piece of coursework by a CSE student about ten years ago.

Neil adopted a novel approach.

"It was a bloody awful day so I thought it would be bloody awful to go for a bloody awful walk. I went to the park. There were lots of bloody awful people walking their bloody awful dogs."

Although it lacks variety it *is* more vivid than the original.

Thursday 3rd March

A perfectly normal Thursday, no free periods so no cover. Then the Man from OFSTED descended upon me from a great height in period eight. He was unable to fault my teaching - I found out later that he is a scientist - but he tore holes in my paperwork until you could see the plaster.

It seems I am using last year's system of recording oral grades instead of this year's - he did confide that they would be back to last year's next year because this year's was unworkable but he did not see this as undermining his criticism in any way... I kept a straight face, Oz would have been proud of me.

Things are back to normal (?) in bed now the twinges in the old arm have subsided. James has been - for him - very considerate. Tonight he rather took me by surprise when he put his hand between my legs because he had Algipan on his middle finger. I nearly called the fire brigade but as he said I hardly know them.

During my free period this afternoon I took the opportunity to ring the Computer Repair Experts to inquire after the health of Archie the Archimedes. Eventually I got through to CRE and spoke to the man who knows nothing about computers but answers the telephone. I know this because he opened the conversation with, "I know nothing about computers, I just answer the telephone."

I asked to speak to the CRE who does know something about computers but he was out on a job. I left a message about the disk drive and we shall see.

James, encouraged by last night, decided to bring home one of his dubious videos. The quality, by which I mean the film quality, was so poor we had to go to bed and improvise instead.

I sat on the edge of the bed, wearing a black blouse, black skirt (if you can call it a skirt, more a waistband) and black stockings and facing a mirror. James sat on the bed behind me and slowly removed my clothes.

He didn't use any Algipan this time so I didn't need to use a glass of water afterwards.

Started reading
Chapter House Dune
, I cannot decide whether Frank Herbert is a sexist or not - I suspect that is exactly the impression he wanted to create. If this were made into a film it would certainly rival one of James' videos. In fact, since it contains the dread word p***s, it would undoubtedly have that part of Miles Teg snipped off!

James did the shopping.

Sunday 6th March

We visited Wakehurst Park. The Skoda very nearly didn't make it and my enjoyment of the delights of nature was marred by anxiety about our ability to get home. This apprehension was justified because on the way home we did indeed break down and have to call out the AA.

Even so, I think we ought to visit Wakehurst more because it is free to life-members of the National Trust. I well remember the looks of disbelief on the faces of my friends at college when I announced that I had joined the National Trust. I went on to explain that I thought they were doing something to preserve our heritage and wildlife etc. and the looks of disbelief turned to looks of astonishment.

When I eventually demanded to know what they had against the National Trust, they told me that I had evidently used the work "Front" instead of "Trust."

The man from the AA was a surly bastard - not at all like the very nice man on the TV.

Monday 7th March

Information Technology is driving me barmy. It isn't so much that we have not got enough computers. It is just that they were all bought at different times, so they don't all run the same programs. At any one time my pupils are working on three different wordprocessors and asking me how to "justify the right margin", "justify both margins" or "switch on justification." which sound like different things but are actually the same thing on different programs - and require a different sequence of commands.

This is an improvement on my original timetable which had me teaching in a room without any computers at all.

Michael (Year 9) mentioned to me that one of the characters in the Lord of the Rings is called 'Shagrat'. 'Is that a name or an instruction?' he enquired innocently.

Tuesday 8th March

Then there are the windows. It was a warm enough day for March. I wanted to open the windows in the computer room. The windows are kept permanently closed and there are blinds down all the time. I eventually managed to get one of the blinds up by dint of tying the string to the leg of a table. Then I opened one of the metal-framed sash windows.

Fortunately I had sufficient reflexes left in these aging synapses to let me remove my hand before the thing came crashing down like a guillotine. The class cheered as I jumped back, the blind string came away from the desk and the blind came crashing down. I nearly sat on a ninth year which serves him right for laughing.

There wasn't much on the television this evening - except cat vomit. Still, I suppose anything is better than Wogan.

Wednesday 9th March

This afternoon we had an Inservice Training session on Drama - three hours of being a tree. This is better than working for a living. Naturally the poor sods who had to cover for us were less sanguine about it.

Victor is back! James has finally got around to recharging old Vic's batteries and he was buzzing away happily. So long, so hard, so Taiwanese.

Thursday 10th March

A phonecall to the alleged computer repairers brought news about Archie the truant Archimedes. They are short of parts and as soon as they get the parts they will repair the computer. When I asked which parts, he explained that he was only the man who answered the phone and didn't know anything about computers.

I had to face what can only be described as a tirade from PMT, who is now acting head of CDT. (Education is full of TLAs- three letter abbreviations). He was irate at the fact he had to cover for English teachers "poncing around" on a drama course. I resorted to the defence of agreeing with him and asking him what he suggested I do - refuse to go, insist on teaching? It would mean a disciplinary at least and I am already in enough trouble with the lovely Olive as it is.

This would have mollified any sane person but I was dealing with PMT. He just went on repeating his point until I ran out of answers. I suppose the trouble is that English teachers don't like repeating themselves whereas CDT teachers do little else.

Masturbation. That is what Amanda wanted to talk to me about in the bar of Ruskin House after the NUT meeting. She has a voice which carries so well I thought for a while she might be a PE teacher.

In fact she teaches Maths but it was masturbation she wanted me to teach her about. I had to keep talking because as long as I was talking she wasn't and the whole bar didn't necessarily want to know what we were talking about.

Amanda has some techniques of masturbation which are frankly alarming and involve the corner of a table. (at least I assume she was talking from personal experience!) I came very close to some personal revelations when I talked to her about vibrators.

"VIBRATORS. HOW INTERESTING. WHAT EXACTLY DO THEY DO WITH THEM THEN?" She asked in a voice which was probably not as loud as it seemed but turned enough heads anyway.

It turned out that she didn't know anything about vibrators. By next month I may well have found another religion for her: the cult of St Victor.

Among other things, she wanted to know whether it was wrong. Why ask me? I do not know what is wrong for committed Christians and the Bible is strangely silent on female masturbation - we know all about poor old Onan pouring his seed on the ground but that is about it.

I explained that it wasn't wrong for atheists but I think her conversion may be a little more complicated than that.

She then started talking about lesbianism: "What do they do?"

Friday 11th March

Nigel produced the following piece of dialogue in an essay entitles "A funny thing happened ...":

Hey, you with the two broken arms, are you a Poll Tax collector?"

"Yes I am a Poll Tax Collector, but I don't have two broken aaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!"

Not bad for a seventh year, but Oz would have a fit, thinking I'd brainwashed the child.

I confiscated a computer game from one of my pupils and out of curiosity I ran it on the Dell at home. It aroused James' interest but what I want to know is: if they play strip poker with their computers what do they do with their girlfriends?

Saturday 12th March

Shopping for a wedding present for George and Edie. Decisions, decisions. Should it be something decorative and impractical (like George) or sturdily unattractive but utilitarian?

I had explored every inch of two department stores before I decided on a toaster designed to look like a toaster. James said this was unimaginative and trite - and therefore entirely suitable.

We could have had wedding presents like this if we had actually told our families we were getting married.