Chapter 13: A Cruisy Winter Term – For a Start

And so it went. I practiced two days a week, played on Saturdays, studied with the group three times a week, worked at the Coffee Bar on two nights, and got together with Robyn two or three times a week. I was a busy lad. I was well organised. I had to be.

My birthday came and went, and after I easily passed my test on the ‘Road Code’ both Grandpa and Dad gave me driving lessons. Frank said he’d like to, but his van was registered as a business vehicle and his insurance specifically prohibited any such activity. I nevertheless passed my practical test, and in those days, that was enough to make me a fully licensed driver. I started saving for a car.

Robyn was fertile around my birthday, but instead of our usual fingering and sucking, she offered me her very well lubed ‘back door’ as a ‘treat’. She said she had been fascinated with the idea for a while, and in spite of the fact that she was bothered about my size, she decided to ‘give it a go’. We were both well aware of my concerns about bacteria in bums, and she reassured me that we would shower as soon as we finished. I was able to put aside my feelings about shit and bacteria, but I still wanted to wear a condom and after she got on her hands and knees, we went very very slowly because it hurt quite a lot at first.

After a while Robyn seemed to get used to the feeling of being stretched and very full back there or relaxed more, or something, and eventually I managed to get my whole length into her. She strummed her clit, and we both had climaxes, but I don’t think either of us enjoyed the experience all that much.

Soapy Bliss pulled me aside a couple of weeks before the end of the second term. I had been playing well, and my fitness, rather than any outstanding talent or ball skills, had enabled me to dominate the midfield pretty consistently.

“I’m putting you up for the Auckland Under 16 Representative team Kerr. I think you’ll walk in on the basis of your performance so far.” I did. At least Dad and Grandpa said the Selector/Coach wrote my name down about three minutes into the only trial that was held.

The Rep team had two practices together before our Sunday game against Waikato. We needed them. Some of the team had been selected for their ball skills or general talent, others like me, for their ability to run and keep running after the ball. The trial hadn’t shown the Selector/Coach much about our ability to combine and cooperate. That proved to be variable. I was tired after our First XI game on the Saturday, but had arranged a night off from Mary’s World, so got nine hours sleep before study at Robyn’s, and was able to cover lotsa ground. We were leading 2-1 about half way through the second half when I went up to intercept a cross just inside our penalty area.

I had been cautious with ‘headers’ since my two bouts of concussion. My brain really didn’t react well to being jarred or bounced around inside my skull. If I was careful to make sure that my neck muscles were tensed and fully engaged when the ball struck my forehead, my skull didn’t move much and my brain wasn’t rattled.

All good. I saw the ball coming and I jumped high to head it away, neck muscles well engaged. I made good contact, but didn’t see the opposition player behind me and to the side going up as I was coming down. It was a sudden and painful surprise when his head hit mine. It hurt a lot.

It also tipped me sideways, and as I tried to recover I went backwards, so my head hit the ground very hard. The grass had been rained on lots, and was comparatively soft, but it was still hard enough to jar my brain big time.

The hurt was different. Not so sharp, but dizzying and somehow sickening. I managed to get back to my feet, but I was staggering, and a minute or so later I ‘greyed out’ and sank to my knees. Dad ran onto the field and got to me before the referee stopped the game. Grandpa was pretty close behind. There was no examination of my mental state or anything else. They just took an arm each, and half walked, half carried me to Dad’s car.

Home to bed at the Grand Kerr’s with aspirin, drawn blinds, and the worst headache I had ever had. Dad was really worried when I told him I was on the edge of vomiting from nausea, and asked our family doctor to make a house call. He came to the Grand Kerrs that evening, examined my reflexes, shone a light in my eyes, and asked me lotsa questions. Grandpa told me later that he was checking to see whether I was confused. I wasn’t, just hurting in my head lots and nauseated very badly.

The Doctor diagnosed concussion (surprise surprise) and told me my nausea was an evolutionary hangover from hunter gatherer days, when humans ate lotsa stuff that might be poisonous, so dizziness or mental disturbance was a good reason to vomit, and make sure that whatever was in our stomachs came out. Whoop de shit!

But he gave me a pill from his bag to reduce the nausea, and wrote a prescription for Grandpa to get more, along with some opiate based painkillers. He instructed him to wake me every couple of hours to check my mental functioning and balance, and to take me to A&E if they deteriorated. They didn’t.

My previous concussion had involved just over a week in bed, with my boredom relieved only by a blowjob from Bronwyn Reed. This time I was in bed for a full fortnight, but I did get three blowjobs from Robyn. Grandma raised no objection when my bedroom door was closed. The pills eliminated the nausea, the painkillers took the edge off my headache, and the blowjobs (and the prospect of the next one) alleviated my boredom.

I missed the last two weeks of school and the flurry of tests, exams, and assignments that went with the end of term, but I was pronounced fit to go back to the farm for the first week of the holidays. Bruce and Robert had evidently been given a ‘heads up’ about my condition by Mum, and they made it clear that I was not expected to carry fencing material or poplar wands up the hills, and could earn my wages by cooking, cleaning, and washing at the farmhouse. They told me that shearers would be coming for three days at the end of my visit, and If I was ‘up to’ it, I could work in the shed and learn to handle the fleeces they would take off.

I handled the cooking. cleaning, and washing relatively easily, but the fortnight in bed had badly affected my strength and endurance, so I was pleased that there was no fencing on the agenda.

The shearing was interesting. The ‘boss’ of the shearing gang looked me over and clearly didn’t think much of a ‘townie’.

“I’m not counting you.” I must have looked puzzled. “We contract to shear sheep and time is money for us. Part of the deal is that the farmers we are shearing for keep the pens full and also provide two shed hands to keep the board clean and help handle the wool. Until I’ve seen you work in the shed, I’m not counting you as one of the two.”

“Yessir.”

“And don’t fucken call me sir – I work for my living!” I didn’t know what to say, so I kept my mouth shut. The boss’ wife, who also cooked for the gang and was in charge of the wool handling winked at me and grinned at him.

“Why didn’t any of the seven dwarves get it together with Snow White?” I still didn’t know what to say, so again I kept my mouth shut. “They were all fucking Grumpy!” There was general laughter, and the boss joined in.

“Call me Jim.” I risked a joke.

“Yes sir – Jim sir!”

The shearers knew their business. The four of them took the wool off nineteen hundred sheep in three days. Bruce and Robert knew theirs too. The holding pens were always full so that there was always a sheep in arms reach of the gate. A shearer could open the gate of his pen with his hip, easily grab a sheep, and drag it backwards out onto the board, sitting it on its bum between his knees as he pulled the cord to start his shearing handpiece and take the first blow. For Bruce’s sheep, that was usually cleaning off the wool on the belly.

Two to three minutes later, the shearer would finish the final blow to take the fleece off the back, and push the newly shorn sheep through his legs and off down the ramp, and turn to his pen for the next one. In the fifteen seconds before he dragged the next one out, the wool handler picked up the fleece and the ‘sweeper’ (that was me) swept the board to clean up scraps and dags. (wool with sheep turds stuck to it).

I came back on the bus with another big sack of mutton, with a few more quid in my savings. Robyn was pleased to see (and feel) me. Grandma Henley’s hip was evidently healing well and she was impatient to return to the farm. She had lots of questions about what she called ‘the pre-lamb shearing’, most of which I couldn’t answer, but I did beat her at Euchre. Well - once anyway.

The two remaining weeks of the August School Holidays were crazy. Frank and Emma had agreed that they would each take a wage from the Coffee Bar business, and put any profit over and above expenses into paying themselves back the two hundred and fifty pounds each they had put up to buy it. The success of Mary’s World had enabled Frank to buy a load of materials and provide work on the house for some of the others. The girls had been just a little resistant at first, but Aapi was immediately enthusiastic about the money on offer, and biked over every morning to throw himself into whatever task Frank assigned.

So when I came back from the farm, it was to find my old bedroom relined, rewired, stopped and painted, and the rewiring and gibbing completed in the bedroom that Frank was intending to occupy on the East side. The girls were preparing to stop and paint it, and Aapi and Frank were moving to tear apart and remodel the laundry. I worked with them, and between work on the house, catching up on the last two weeks of the term’s schoolwork, doing three or four evenings in the Coffee Bar, and having a nice time with Robyn, I was pretty busy.