Apologies first I guess.
This story is unedited. There will be mistakes. If that's a problem for you, then I suggest you move on. I do need to say thanks to Randi & George, who helped with development.
This is a long story. I was going to post it in several chapters, but decided. We're all adults.
All sexual connections are over eighteen.
*****
"hey look, it's calf girl." I glanced up from giving my calf a hug to see Andi and some of her group of popular girls giggling and laughing. Turning my head, I tried to ignore their taunts as they walked past the animal displays at the district Agriculture and Pastoral show.
"I think the cows better looking aye?" Melanie Mathew's added loud enough for me to hear. As if she had anything to brag about.
Their snide nasty comments hurt, but I was used to it. Ever since the first time I met Andi, she'd taken some perverse pleasure in poking fun at me. Like today, surrounded by her little support troupe of popular girls.
She bullied and teased me, the whole way through school. Maybe I was just to passive? An easy target.
I gave Daisy, my calf a hug. "You still love me don't you?" The way she rubbed her head up against me as I hugged her made me think she did. I loved her, right from the day dad brought her home. Her mother had died giving birth, and daisy needed nursing.
I loved her, and volunteered that very moment. "I'll do it Dad, Please, you can trust me."
"You'll have to nurse her, feed her, spend time with her."
"I promise Dad."
Daisy and I connected, she needed a mum, somebody to care for her, and I needed something... I sat with her in the barn, her head in my lap as I bottle fed her. Brushed her coat and helped her walk around. From that day forward she became my focus.
Well, while I was not at school anyway. Mum took me along to the shows with her, and I took great pride and pleasure at showing her. Especially when we occasionally won some blue ribbons.
Dad let me keep her as our house cow. I milked her, and cared for her.
I even begged for her life after dad caught her in the veggie garden eating the cabbages. She nearly ended up on a truck to the butchers shop that day.
Dad made me fix the fences, and I had to teach her to stay away from the garden. Not easy, I can tell you that.
Andi made my school years hell. I never understood why she hated me so much...
I never did anything to her. We weren't friends, we hardly knew each other. Still, every day she made my life hell. It got to the stage I hated going to school.
My saviour was my Uncle Roly. Who lived on our farm in a small cottage.
He'd never been part of our life. I'd heard of him, dad played some of his records on the stereo. When I asked about him, dad said. "He's a musician. Lives in the city, he never liked farm life. He wanted the city life.
It seemed weird the day he turned up. I didn't talk to him, but dad let him move in and he worked for my dad on the farm after that.
Dad wouldn't talk about it, he just said. "He's had a hard life, Roz. Treat him softly and he'll do you no harm."
That sounded strange coming from my dad. Uncle Roly... hurt somebody... No, impossible. He was a lovely man. At least that's how he seemed to me. At first, we didn't have much to do with each other. He lived a reclusive life. Hardly leaving the property other than to go to the liquor store, or the pharmacy. He didn't seem to have friends, he almost never talked to anyone.
Even when we worked together, he never said much.
It was music
That was the glue that he and I bonded over. He loved it, and I often heard it bellowing loudly from his little cottage.
At first I simply listened, sitting in my bedroom with the window open listening to his wailing guitar. I loved it. I already had an interest in the guitar. I had been learning before he turned up.
It was the day he caught me spying through his living room window, listening and watching him play.
He stormed over to the window, and was about to pull the drapes. As our eyes met, something changed. He opened the window and leaned out.
"What the hell are you doing?"
"Watching."
"Why?"
"I'm learning to play guitar. I love listening to you and wanted to see how you get those sounds."
"You play guitar?" He asked dubiously?
"Yeah, I have lessons with Mr's Watson, every Wednesday."
He seemed gobsmacked. "What, that old biddy still teaches?"
I nodded, not understanding why he was suddenly upset.
"Go get your guitar. Bring it out and let me see what she's taught you."
"Really?" I gasped in joyous shock.
"Yeah, and hurry up. Your mother'll shoot me if I keep you up late."
I played Green Sleeves, the song Mr's Watson showed me.
"Wow." He said, his head nodding. You got good rhythm." He watched on before he asked. "Have you been learning scales as well as chords?"
"Some, but I don't understand."
He pulled out his guitar and slung it low over his shoulder and started playing. Not songs but scales. His fleet fingers dancing over the fretboard. Moving so easily, and he didn't even watch where his fingers went. He just played.
Totally stunned, I watched on like a drowning guppy. My mouth hanging open, my eyes bugging out. I think that was the moment. He realised, I wasn't merely interested. I loved it.
That was the moment we became more than just relatives but friends. He became my mentor, my teacher.
I didn't care that he was reclusive, in fact it was perhaps what made us kindred spirits. Shy, nah I was worse than shy. The reason Andi and her bunch picked on me was mostly I didn't fit in. I was never much into sports, I definitely wasn't a scholar. I wasn't bright and bubbly, or pretty either for that matter. Just plain old me.
Uncle Roly and I sat around in his cottage. Him playing, then talking about his old band. Lot's of photos and news clippings. As I got better, he brought me my first electric guitar. A Telecaster. That's when the fun really started. With the volume turned up loud, we rocked out. The walls of his little cottage shaking from the pressure.
Him laughing maniacally. Me cackling like a hen, or a crazy fangirl, which I suppose I was.
*****
"Catch calf girl." I saw it at the last minute, before the netball hit me in the face. It came in at bullet speed, but I managed to bunt it away with my hands. Everybody laughed as I staggered back.
"You have to catch it Rosalyn." Mr's Williams our gym teacher yelled curtly. I hated netball, especially since Andi and her cronies were in the team.
"Everybody knows cows can't catch." Blaire added to Andi's taunt. I tried to be part of the team, I wanted to find some way of fitting in. I struggled though, it was hard. If Andi, or her friends got the ball, they never passed it to me. I could be waving my arms frantically in wide open space, still they never passed it to me.
"What's the point, she''ll just drop it." Caroline one of the girls said to Mr's Williams, who was trying to get the girls to include me. "She's such a clumsy cow." Of course that would be followed by a chorus of laughter.
At home, I'd go and spend some time with Daisy, make sure she had plenty of feed. I knew if she didn't have plenty of hay. She'd be straight back in the garden. Then I'd get my jobs done around the farm, help dad and uncle Roly. Then help mum with dinner. After that it was always out to uncle Roly's cottage where we rocked out.
"Take your time Roz, don't be in such a hurry. You're trying to hard." Easy for him to say. He was so good, me. I was always trying to keep up with his flying fingers.
"Breathe, Roz. Close your eyes, let your mind take control. Don't force it." I tried, but always panicked when I felt myself struggling to keep up. Uncle Roly loved really fast punk songs, and I guess his love affair with them rubbed off on me. His tastes were very contagious.
It wasn't that he didn't play other styles. He loved blues. Deep dark sensual old American style blues. I loved jamming with him when he was in the mood. The pace of the songs allowed me to find ways to get in and blend with him.
"Oh yeah, that's sweet, baby girl." He commented when I got it right. His praise always gave me a deep feeling of satisfaction. Of achievement and pride.
Yeah, I knew he was struggling with life. If I was late getting out to his cottage, he'd be drunk. I didn't mind so much, cos that's when we played the blues, and he let me play lead. He'd just play some slinky rhythm licks, and I'd come over the top with lead.
"Go slow." He growled. "Stop shredding, let the song breathe. Sometimes, less is more. Learn when to hold that note. Let it ring out."
I learned, it took a while but I learned. I slowly grew to understand what space was. I learned when not to play...
The other thing with Uncle Roly. He hated the modern trends, he hated all the digital effects stuff. He had only a couple of old analogue pedals. He loved the old guitar players who like him refused to go down the effects road.
"There's nothing you can get from a pedal, you can't get from the guitar. Just give it a chance. You want distortion, then crank her up... Let her sing.
He adored Rory Gallagher. He spent ages playing his records and explaining the riffs Rory played. He broker them down and taught me.
"It's not just what he plays Roz, it's the sound. Listen to how he bends those strings. How he lets one note take up space...
