Diary of an Assistant Mistress Read Online Free Page B

Diary of an Assistant Mistress
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could probably save the rain forests single-handed if we stopped having them. There is a choice between the Sunday Sleazies which have the occasional interesting story buried in a pile of intellectual analyses of "Neighbours", the quality Sundays which fit in with Chesterton's definition of journalism - "scribbling on the back of advertisements" and then there is the Sunday Sport which is beyond a joke.
     
     

February
    Monday 1st February
    I have started walking to school, partly to save petrol but mainly to save my nerves from the abrasions caused by constant anxiety about the roadworthiness of the Skoda. This morning I walked in behind two first year boys.
    "I can't understand French. It's a foreign language to me." said one.
    "Wait until you try German. It's even more foreign." replied the other.
    I had to think of a good reason to give my third years for the fact that I had not got their essays ready. I thought of falling back on the tried and tested; "I am returning these essays, which I will not even dignify with a mark, so you can have the opportunity to reconsider your ghastly spelling and grammar and resubmit them."
    In the end I decided to resort to the truth - I had left them at school on Friday. I suppose this was because I was so upset about Snooks and her Methodist death squads.
    At the end of the school day I was able to walk in to the staffroom and announce that I had suffered a head failure - to be precise it was one of the computers which had failed, though it was I who was suffering. Do I have to add that it was the computer with most of the pupils' work on it and that the said work is now lost forever because it had not been backed up? If there is one # rule of life I try to instill in my pupils it is "save before you print" but this is a fat lot of good if Miss hasn't backed up the hard disk on the expensive tape streamer Miss persuaded the head to buy - another of the things I should have done during my lamented free period on Friday.
    I got a few sympathetic comments like "I thought your hairdo was pulling your brain too tight." but there were too many people who said absolutely nothing and turned away. Obviously Torquemada's poison has been spreading. It was a relief to go to the Year Meeting.
    Or so I thought. It seems that Mrs Snooks has had time to send a circular to all heads of year which says that "taking assemblies is invaluable preparation for any teacher seeking promotion." and the whole meeting was then hijacked by Torquemada talking in a remarkably charming way about assemblies and how much he appreciated the co-operation of other teachers and so on and so forth.
    In the evening I watched the Emmanuelle video over the third year marking . James said it was either that or "Massage Girls of Bangcock" (sic) according to the video catalogue.
    I had a good guess at what he would have in mind after the video but I was rather amazed to find out that he expected me to be "turned on" by this film which is mainly about lesbian activities in the far east. I did point out that if I was turned on by lesbian films I would probably be turned on to women rather than to him.
    In some ways the worst thing about pornography is not the degradation of women (and the degradation of men for that matter) but the quality of the videos. The grainy texture of the pictures and the strange ban on cocks by the powers that control our viewing mean that I lose interest very quickly. In fact it is mainly the contortions they have to engage in to keep the videos cockless which manage to keep me amused. In fact, come to think of it, it must be this rather unusual ban which causes the preponderance of lesbian scenes in pornographic videos.
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    Tuesday 2nd February
    If that cat mistakes the porridge oats for cat litter again there will be serious consequences.
    An interesting discussion on literature with one of my second years who thinks George Lucas is a much better writer than Jane Austen. You must admit that her Science
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