Diary of an Assistant Mistress

by Teri Power

  I started teaching more-or-less on the side of the pupils, understanding their point of view. As I got older I suppose I started to see the parents' point of view. Now I hardly think about the children from one day's end to the next except as subjects for another form to fill in.

  Concentrate on the pupils, ignore the paperwork and I could be sacked for incompetence.

  Friday 27th Sunday 29th May

  More profiles. Towards the end they became just plain fiction.

  Monday 30th May

  Handed in profiles and noticed rather nervously that all the other ones in the box were on yellow paper and mine were on blue.

  Department meeting. It turns out that only George and I had used the correctly coloured forms for the profiles and consequently we were the ones who would have to redo them.

  Oz wants us all to volunteer to do wall displays for the forthcoming parents' evening. I was undiplomatic enough to point out that we have no drawing pins because they have not been ordered by our beloved head of department. George is flatly refusing to do a wall display until he has a definitive ruling on which colour paper it should be on.

  Tuesday 31st May

  George's rebellion over the wall display lasted about as long as his periodic attempts to stop smoking usually do. As usual he had a complex self-justification. Actually I think it boils down to the fact that we like Oz and he is the only member of the hierarchy we can respect even if he couldn't run a beetle drive.

  James wanted to "try something different" tonight. It was only after he had me tied to the chair in the black underwear that I realised he is beginning to run out of ideas.

  Flaming June

  Wednesday 1st June

  George invited us to dinner on Friday with, I must say, rather more excitement in his tone than one normally associates with a dinner engagement. He started almost immediately to talk about the people in his area who held "wife-swapping" parties. He mentioned that one of his neighbours had gone to a wife-swapping party and come home with a lawnmower. I said that I usually called them husband-swapping parties.

  The conversation ended there because the bell went. I assume this is just a spot of Georgeism because I can hardly see Edie going along with his fantasies.

  Thursday 2nd June

  Now I am worried. Edie caught me in the corridor and asked if George had invited me for Friday. Since she obviously knew he had, I thought this odd. Then she said that her neighbour had gone to one of the local husband-swapping parties and come back with a dishwasher.

  Edie and George are good friends of mine but this is not on. [Actually, partly because they are good friends of mine and I would like it to stay that way]. In any case I have had experience of George's blitzkrieg technique and I think most Panzers are sexier.

  I expect the whole thing is an elaborate George joke - he tends to mix his fantasies with his jokes. Still, forewarned is forearmed.

  Friday 3rd June

  Prawn cocktail followed by pork chops in a most unusual sauce (James has since suggested it was an aphrodisiac - this means nothing, he finds Tizer an aphrodisiac). I had taken the precaution of coming by taxi because George usually plies guests with brash young Algerian claret. On this occasion it was Nuit St Georges and I noted that they were drinking less than usual.

  They have arranged the room with two grey sofa beds facing each other and we sat down on these for coffee - Edie asking James to sit with her. I will just mention that the coffee was better than usual as well but now I really must get on.

  Edie brought in the coffee. She had undone a couple of buttons on her blouse and it was obvious that she was wearing no bra. She had to lean over James several times. He didn't really stand a chance.

  The unexpected part was that Edie made most of the running. At this point, George had his arm across the sofa behind me and one hand on my thigh. By George standards this is cold modesty.

  It was Edie who started to talk to all of us about sexual technique. It all sounded a bit clinical to me but James' Levis failed to conceal the fact that he was taking a more than academic interest.

  Then I suddenly noticed that her blouse had come completely adrift. I later recognised that this was the point of no return. She started, as it were idly, stroking one nipple as she looked at us each in turn.

  Up to this point, George had very wisely kept himself to himself. When Edie turned her attention to James, talking to him, idly resting her hand on his growing erection, then he started. I noticed later that neither George nor Edie had obstructed my view of James or his view of me.

  The approach was not subtle, except by George's standards. He put his hand up my skirt. What he did with his hand suggested that he had been taking lessons. For a man whose idea of foreplay used to be boasting about the size of his equipment, he had made progress.

  Edie knelt down and did what could be described as a party trick with a condom. She put it between her teeth and then transferred it to James' penis. I won't try to emulate that for a while - in any case I don't like the taste of condom. (I suppose I could put mustard on it.)

  George and Edie had both learned patience (of course I hadn't had much experience with Edie!) and were more intent on giving pleasure to their partners than grabbing it for themselves.

  I did notice that Edie was watching me a great deal, though she may have been watching George. We only made love once, George even used my favourite sideways position, though I wouldn't have thought it was sufficiently male-dominant for his tastes.

  I later found myself helping Edie with the washing-up, George is obviously not completely liberated then.

  Saturday 4th June

  James did not want to discuss last night but I did. Had George got married solely in order to qualify for wife-swapping parties? It all seemed like Edie's initiative, was there something about the PE department we had never suspected? Most importantly of all, where did we go from here?

  James mumbled a lot until I got on to more important questions, like how did Edie compare with me. There he was quite explicit enough, thank you very much.

  Would we ever do it again? James seemed all too keen. I had to explain that it was the sight of his arousal that turned me on. He tried to say something complimentary in response and made such a mess of it that I hit him with a pillow and we left it at that.

  Sunday 5th June

  James insisted on making love first thing this morning. Then he started insisting that George was a better lover than he was. I pointed out that Victor was a better lover than he was which seemed to mollify him a little.

  I suppose it was the lack of anything interesting in the Sunday papers but I managed to get him talking about last Friday. It seems that the simple truth was that he was embarrassed. I made noises about nobody being in a position to feel guilty because we were all grown-ups and knew what we were doing - well more-or-less what he was doing in George's case.

  He insisted that he hadn't taken the initiative, Edie had. I said I could hardly fail to have noticed and went back to my speculations of yesterday.

  Monday 6th June

  Inservice Training day on assessment. George said he wouldn't mind assessing me and I replied that I wouldn't mind assessing him and showed Clair a ruler which I held at the three inch mark. The day was otherwise uneventful and pointless. I would be in a much better position to deliver the National Cur if I could spend the time planning lessons.

  If Oz is going to assess my efficiency, perhaps Torquemada should assess my toleration, John Major could assess my charisma and Frank Bruno could assess my diction.

  Tuesday 7th June

  One of my first year pupils - the sort who always comes up to tell me what she had for tea last night - admired my pullover and when I said my mother knitted it for me, she replied, "But she's dead."

  I am not given to superstition but I did ring mum to find out how she was getting on. She was a little surprised at the call and assumed I wanted to borrow money. In the end I settled for 50 quid. I will pay her bac
k in a fortnight.

  Wednesday 8th June

  I told my Lit. group about the misunderstanding surrounding Hamlet's "fatal flaw." This was of course a misprint in many early criticisms. Provincial companies of players who didn't run to such things as swords, used to replace the sword fight at the end of Hamlet with a wrestling match and it was in this that Hamlet was fatally floored by Laertes.

  Then I stopped. They carried on writing all this down. Notes really do go straight from the teacher's mouth to the page without touching the student's brain.

  Invigilated Stage 3 Science SATS. This scientific test proves conclusively that nine out of ten pupils cannot answer daft questions under exam conditions with a lawnmower going outside. And as for Sandy with her hay-fever: this will disqualify her as a scientist for life.

  Thursday 9th June

  A typed envelope with 50 quid in pound notes arrived this morning. I had a job explaining it to James. In the end I said it was from a secret admirer.

  The case of the Buddhist beefburger. Our staffroom is overrun with ants now. I think the constant spillage of sugar near the kettle may be a factor. When we suggested blasting the little blighters to kingdom some with a dose of Nippon, Pat was most upset and said that he never killed ants (or greenfly - and he grows roses!) We were all rather touched by this until we remembered that Pat is a carnivore, red in tooth and claw - usually from tomato sauce from his beefburgers.

  Friday 10th June

  George and Edie came round for a meal and, just to be on the safe side, I invited Oz and Jane as well. Oz and Jane are now on speaking terms but Jane has a learned distrust of any female who is under Oz, so to speak.

  In the event, George was very proper and engaged Oz in a lengthy argument about CPVE, GNVQ and capitation and only made a half-hearted attempt to grope Jane in the hallway under the guise of getting her coat.

  Saturday 11th June

  Shopping in Sainsbury's. Everything is in the wrong place: not a bit like Safeways. There is also a different selection of pupils on the checkout.

  Sunday 12th June

  Finished marking Lit. essays. Fortunately they had taken my remarks about Hamlet as a joke, or at least as unreliable because Cole's notes did not confirm them.

  Monday 13th June

  "How do you feel about a teacher's responsibility for moral education?" was the rather unexpected question with which Mrs Snooks greeted me when I was summoned to her office after school. I did write an essay with a similar title when I was a student, it ran to 3500 words.

  Fortunately, Olive did not want a reply because she then proceeded to answer her own question at some length and in a very firm tone.

  I was almost totally mystified. I recall that her contribution to moral education in the school was to give the girls a lecture in assembly about not wearing patent shoes because boys could see their underwear reflected in them. I hoped she didn't want me to emulate her.

  As I left I saw George hovering around and I decided to wait in the Staff Quiet Room - a room set aside for marking. Needless to say I didn't have any marking with me and I set about reading all the references to morality in the Staff Guide. This turned out to be a reference to gross moral turpitude (as opposed to net moral turpitude) which was not defined but for which one could be sacked. One can also be sacked for epilepsy, I noted, which seems a rather outdated regulation. James "suffers" from epilepsy to the extent that he takes four tablets a day: that's it, no fits no blackouts, four tablets.

  When George came out he looked as mystified as I felt. He had assumed that Olive was trying to drum up support for assemblies but couldn't be sure.

  Tuesday 14th June

  The thick plottens! George commandeered my free period and called me into his office - actually it is Oz's office, it even has a picture of a great tit on the door. When I saw Edie was already there, I wondered what he had in mind.

  He explained that he and Edie had both been called in for the same little talk with our beloved head yesterday. As far as he could ascertain, nobody else had been.

  I began to wonder out loud if anyone had been talking about our personal affairs and both Edie and George looked coy. One forgets that George is about as discreet as a drunken Sun journalist and usually as accurate.

  WHAT had he said and to whom? He would not say. I did point out (I was in no mood to spare his feelings) that George often boasted about conquests he hadn't made. I have no idea if this is true but it seems likely and he was in no position to deny it. In any case the Snooks couldn't do any more than she had.

  I saw the way Edie was looking at George and made the merry parting quip: "It looks like the whips and chains for you tonight." It was just at this point that Tessa walked in to the office. Tessa! It is very hard for a member of our department to look disapproving about anything, but Tessa manages.

  Wednesday 15th June

  I heard the phrase "gross moral turpitude" for the second time this week and I was in no mood to ask if it was used for thinning paint.

  I had been summoned to the Snooks again. Some of my colleagues were kind enough to start humming the Death March as I left the staffroom. Such a summons usually elicits sympathy because the head does not call people in to her office to offer good news. On the one occasion in the last decade that she had cause to congratulate me, she came to find me rather than calling me in.

  The discussion began with one of her mystifications. "There have been complaints." I settled down to ferret out who had complained before I was prepared to discuss what they complained of.

  After about fifteen minutes, she then went in for another piece of mystification by saying that she hadn't got the "correspondence" to hand, called in her long-suffering secretary and started a bureaucratic minuet about who had which letters.

  As they did this, which lessened the impact of the Snooks interrogation considerably, I remembered a piece of advice from my mother. When someone is trying to intimidate you, imagine him or her with no clothes on. I am not sure this works with the Snooks, it is just as likely to put me off my lunch. Snooks has rather remarkable breasts. I don't think she has silicon implants, they must be reinforced concrete. Nothing sexy (at least not to my eye) merely formidable. However, I was distracted from these observations because they had found the "correspondence", which turned out to be one letter.

  By stonewalling, I eventually got to see the letter. It was one of those crabby handwritten little A5 notes on lined paper with ring-binding perforations along the top. She wouldn't give it it me, "because it dealt with other matters as well."

  However, it transpired that a parent was complaining that I advocated "forbidden practices." I immediately recognised this as a term used by the Church of the Second Coming. It is rather difficult to give a categorical undertaking to refrain from advocating "forbidden practices" when I do not know what the Second Comers forbid.

  In any case, the Snooks decided that she didn't want to tell me the name of the parent. I decided this was ridiculous and settled down to wait again. Eventually she did reveal the name. It was the name of a parent whose child I do not teach. I think Oz does. I imparted this information to the Snooks but she still felt the need to give me a reprimand for moral turpitude.

  Thursday 16th June

  I looked up the name of the pupil to whom I had been advocating forbidden practices. It turned out that I had covered a lesson for this class back in May and I had not explicitly condemned Julie for being fingered in the cinema, I had condemned her fairly explicitly for not doing any work instead.

  Oz said that he wouldn't stand for this nonsense himself and he would have given Snooksy a piece of his mind. The concept of Oz giving anyone a piece of his mind is comic.

  Friday 17th June

  Strange fault on the IBM Clone. Every time we switch on the printer about ten pages of a document about tree planting start spewing out like the contents of the magic porridge pot. Eventually resolved the problem by removing the document from the printer queue.

&
nbsp; Computers produce magic of exactly the kind in nursery stories: get one word wrong in the spell and disaster will ensue. I suppose this is why there are so many sword and sorcery games for the PC around.

  How many stories are there in which a magician gives some unsuspecting bozo three wishes and the whole thing turns out to be a trick because he accidentally wishes his wife would shut up so he has to use another wish to get her power of speech back and the third to get her to forget the whole incident so he ends up with an amnesiac wife and a profound distrust of magicians?

  There are just as many stories in which someone utters the magic spell "Erase *.*" to save herself a minute and then has to spend half an hour to an hour with PC Tools trying to retrieve the files she didn't mean to destroy; finds out half of them cannot be recovered at all and ends up with an amnesiac PC and a profound distrust of MS-DOS.

  Saturday 18th June

  Shopping at Sainsbury's. Their layout does make sense in its own way. Went to the White Lion. James clearly wanted to get me drunk and take advantage of me. I mentioned fairly quietly that it was still the wrong time of the month for that kind of thing.

  Sunday 19th June

  Fourth year essays on "Much Ado about Nothing" make me despair. It must be something about the way I teach it. My analysis of overhearing in the plot: not noted by 40% of candidates; not understood by 60%. A flippant remark about overhearing things in the girls' loo: regurgitated by 100%.

  Monday 20th June

  "InfoTec is groovy fun,

  So if you've got a brain, get off of your bum."

  This was the result of my attempts to solicit advertising copy from my third years, designed to attract girls into Information Technology. Perhaps it was just as well that PMT of CDT has scattered the components of the CPVE camera to the four winds so we cannot make a commercial in any case.

  I wonder where the Archimedes is.

  Judo. I am too old for this.