Diary of an Assistant Mistress

The Diary of an Assistant Mistress

by Teri Power

When I started teaching I was surprised to find out that I was employed as an “assistant mistress”. So when I moved in with James I insisted on being called his mistress and no way was he to employ any assistants.

This is my diary in which I talk about my life in and out of school quite candidly. I hope you enjoy it. I certainly enjoyed writing it

Names of schools, pupils and teachers have been changed in a cunning plan to prevent them sacking me.

Teri (Chimera) Power

Friday 1st January

Tea at the vicarage. It is so difficult to know the correct form of behaviour, especially when the vicar's son pours his sugar into the saucer and proceeds to suck it up his nose with a straw. They say he has trouble with his sinuses and I must say that after my efforts to emulate him I can see why.

Saturday 2nd January

It's official.
George
is engaged to Edie. My abiding recollection of George is of his insistence on borrowing my lipstick and drawing an enormous phallus on my tummy after the departmental Christmas party - he is obviously one of those who find size impressive. I had the devil's own job getting the marks off before my husband came home. I needn't have bothered -
James
had had a bit of a do at work and wouldn't have noticed much if I had been in bed with George when he came home.

Edie, like all PE teachers, has a fairly well-developed sadistic streak - in fact she has a fairly well-developed everything - and I can only hope she will be able to keep George under some semblance of control.

Started work on the fourth year profiles. I sometimes think that if the bright sparks who think up these time-wasting exercises had to plant enough trees - preferably at night and without the aid of spades - to replace the forests which have to be felled to implement their pet schemes then they would all end up in the early graves they so richly deserve. But then perhaps I'm cynical.

Sunday 3rd January

More fourth year profiles. What can I say about Simon? Two things stick in my mind - he was caught passing round whisky and coke at the year nine disco and he wrote an essay about Lady MacBeth from which I read extracts in the staffroom and succeeded in shocking practically everyone.

Does he

a) seldom display initiative.

b) sometimes display initiative.

or c) display considerable initiative and encourage other pupils?

It has to be (c) but I can't help thinking it is misleading in some way.

Sunday 3rd January - supplemental

Well I must say I haven't had so much fun since the day I got the KY jelly mixed up with the superglue.

It all started when James saw a joke (and it is fairly unusual for James to see a joke) on the television about a vibrator. In retrospect I can imagine his little old mind turning over the idea until on Saturday he received a small parcel - a jiffy bag to be precise - which had me wondering what he might be up to.

Then last night I found out. James is, I must admit, very good with his hands. He was demonstrating his prowess on my clit and I was lying back and thinking of England - actually I was thinking of James's hands and various other parts of his anatomy - when I felt something uncommonly large and hard entering me. Large and hard and plastic. This was good in its own way but nothing to what was to - er - come later.

I was wide awake and paying attention when he pulled the vibro out and switched it on. It buzzed like a Lego motor and when he applied it to my clit it was quite a revelation. It is obviously not a children's toy. Hope I didn't wake the neighbours.

Monday 4th January

Shopping at Safeways. Living near the school can be a real pain at times. Every other child is one I teach and the usual run of events is something like this:-

I see Tracy. I say "Hello." (I have been teaching Tracy for about a year). Tracy completely ignores me.

I see another Tracy. I say "Hello." (I have been teaching Tracy for about a year). Tracy completely ignores me.

I see Tracy. I say "Hello, Tracy." Tracy has a fit of the giggles and I suddenly remember that this particular Tracy is called Helen.

I see Tracy and I say absolutely nothing. Tracy says, "You didn't recognise me, Miss Power, did you?"

Then, of course, I see Gavin and his friends, Gavin and Gavin. I try to ignore them. They will either make veiled lewd suggestions, offering their pustular bodies for my delectation, or they will wait until I have passed them and start shouting "Paki bitch" or some such remark.

On one occasion I did challenge one of the Gavins and gave him a brief History and Geography lesson, explaining where Pakistan is and what an Anglo-Indian is. Later I was furious with myself because I must have left Gavin with the impression that it is OK to abuse people who actually come from Pakistan.

I have met Pakis from India, Africa and Turkey. I have also met one from Italy. Me, I'm a Paki from Streatham.

Back home to do something drastic to Gavin's profile.

Tuesday

5th January

A day of high and rising winds and rain. I am reliably informed by the Met Office that the 100 mph winds are not a hurricane and this is very reassuring. Even so I am finding it hard to keep my feet on the ground.

Back to work tomorrow, or at least back to an Inservice Training Day - these are usually about as much use as a chocolate teapot. They also take up time that might more usefully (?) be spent sorting out these damnable profiles.

Wednesday 6th January

I cannot believe it. I was there and I still cannot believe it.

We turned up full of the joys of winter - those of us who could get through the fallen trees etc. - to a day of glorified time-wasting to find that the main speaker could not come and a stand-in had to give a mumbled talk on - of all things - time management.

TIME MANAGEMENT! And there we all were, watching each golden minute drop silently on to the slag-heap of life. It is at times like these, when I am listening to some worn-out platitudes from some worn-out platitudinarian while Time's winged chariot does whatever Time's winged chariot does (hurries near) that I wish I'd at least learnt to knit so that the morning would not be completely wasted and I could amuse myself with fantasies about the guillotine.

Thursday 7th January

Term starts in dead Earnest. Poor old Earnest. We don't actually have any Earnests this year, a fair crop of Jameses, a few Alis (male and female - which leads to some misleading graffiti, Ali wants to suck Ali etc.) and the usual Gavins and Traceys.

It started badly with a short sharp row in the staffroom with
Torquemada
, the head of Divinity. T will never get it into his head that some of us are not Christians (in fact, on a world scale, most of us). This term it was Christian Aid. He has decided that I would be an "appropriate parson" (and they say my vowel sounds are weird!) an "appropriate parson", if you please, to do an assembly about the Third World.

Of course, the Third World I know most about is Streatham but I did not fall into the trap of using that line. I do know enough about how Christians have Aided the Third World over the years ... I had only got as far as the massacre at Amritsar when the bell went for registration and I have a sneaking feeling T has still got me down for that assembly.

Then I had the usual lame excuses about losing books and forgetting about the coursework during the holidays and I gave the usual lecture about the only way to fail GCSE being to lose the coursework. This lecture is so boring that I almost walked out on it myself.

The day did not improve a great deal and when I went out to find I had left the Skoda's lights on all day and had to get a jump start from Torquemada, I really began to believe there is a god up there and he doesn't like me very much today.

Friday 8th January

It has been a long term. This morning I found that the car wouldn't start so I had to walk to work and arrived late - just as the head was arriving so I witnessed her late arrival and she witnessed mine. The question is, who is writing a report on whom?

I had sixty third year pupils turning up for the first lesson of the day in a room with desks for thirty. Half of them were supposed to be with the
Wizard of Oz
- our remarkable head of department - who had cocked up the timetable (mirabile dictu). It is hard to believe that none of the forms I teach is referred to on the timetable by the same name as the pupils are given - thus 9E(En)3 is in fact 9X2 - using the word fact as loosely as possible.

It is not surprising that some pupils break down in tears while trying to decipher the timetable, plenty of members of staff do the same thing.

Oz's cock-up took 35 minutes to sort out because we have not received any set lists because the computers are being networked. The lesson was only a single - which lasts 35 minutes. That's education for you.

On the way home I saw two charming primary school girls feeding the ducks on the pond. It was only when I got closer that I noticed that they were in fact tempting the ducks to come closer with the bread and then pelting them with stones.

The rest of this story is very predictable. I decided it was my business to tell them off. I asked them why they were throwing stones at the ducks. They asked whose business it was anyway. I asked them what their parents would say if they knew about it. They said that their parents had told them to do it. I asked them their names. They said that they didn't talk to strangers. Then, as I went on home, they called the usual names after me from a safe distance.

Saturday 9th January

Tea at the vicarage. At least John, the vicar, finds Torquemada as amusing as I do. He has long given me up as a hopeless heathen (and I have long given him up as a reformist ratbag - we are the best of friends).

I told him about the girls throwing stones at the ducks and by coincidence he thinks they attend one of those dreadful C of E schools and he can "do something". I will withhold my admiration until I see what something he can do.

James used the vibrator - I have decided to call it "Victor" - again tonight. I had a good time, I think Victor was enjoying it (positively humming with excitement), but Victor's size and permanent erection are beginning to make James feel inadequate.

Victor is superior to a husband in a number of ways. He is clean and carries no risk of social diseases or pregnancy; satisfaction is guaranteed and he doesn't burn the toast at breakfast. I think James is right to point out that he has no conversation though.

Sunday 10th January

I see from today's newspaper that a man has been given a suspended three month sentence for setting dogs on a fox. If this is really cruel and unusual behaviour we can look forward to half the Tories being locked up. Some hope!

Marking third year essays. It is amazing how much they manage to forget during the Christmas holiday. The only advantage is that they have forgotten the ill-fated lesson on the apostrophe. This is the lesson in which I explain in a very painstaking fashion where the apostrophe should be used and from then on they feel free to pour a bucketful of apostrophes over the page every time they write essay's or poem's

Monday 11th January

10

Why do they come to me? Emma came to me, during a lesson, although that would hardly impinge on her consciousness, and asked me if she could have a word. So we went out into the terribly private corridor and, while I listened to sounds of rising mayhem from inside the classroom, she asked me an entirely casual and theoretical question of no particular personal significance.

As it happens the question was whether doctors had to reveal the results of pregnancy tests to the mothers of minors.

I went back into the classroom and read section 9 of the Riot Act to 3K(En)7(2) and then went out to talk to Emma.

She had taken the morning off to go to the doctor for a pregnancy test. This is in itself bizarre because, of course, the idiot could have gone to Boots, she is not that short of money. It turns out that she had "had sex with" a sixth former at a party - I noticed the rather sedate use of language - it was the first time she or her friends had used the coy expression "had sex with" for fucking or screwing and the interesting fact that she didn't name the sixth former, despite the fact that she normally gave me a list of her conquests whether I wanted to know or not.

When I mentioned the fact that she had got drunk for the first time when she was 12 and she could hardly use that as an explanation of her behaviour, she said that there was "a lot of stuff going around that party," as if this was supposed to reassure me.

We got on to what practical steps she ought to take if she were pregnant and I found myself eventually advising her to tell her mother before she found out - as she inevitably would - but not to do anything until the facts were known. It was not as if her periods were actually as regular as clockwork and such things as anxiety or her periodic diets could have mucked up her biological mechanism rather than young whats-his-name.