Run, run, run

It's Sanfermines up in Pamplona at the moment. You know the thing, white clothes, red neckerchiefs, running with bulls - the Hemingway book.

I often listen to the 8 am news on the radio and, for the past few days, today was the last, they've been doing a live broadcast of the bull running. It only lasts a bit over a couple of minutes so it doesn't interfere too much with the real news.

Once upon a time I lived in Ciudad Rodrigo. There too, but at Carnaval time, they have an encierro. The bulls run through the streets, lined with very solid, railway sleeper type, fences to the town square. Encierro means locking up so, when they get to the square, they are penned up.

The bulls are led along the route by mansos, bulls but not fighting bulls. Manso means something like docile but a five to six hundred kilos of bull isn't my idea of something cuddly. The idea is that these mansos have done the route before so they lead the fighting bulls to their destination. We'd watched all 12 bulls pass by one day in Ciudad Rodrigo and as they'd gone we came out from behind the big, solid wood fence we'd sheltered behind. Two of the daft mansos changed their minds and came running back down the street towards us. We were back behind that fence in a flash.

One day in Ciudad Rodrigo there is a variation where bulls are shepherded into town by men and women on horseback. The bulls are still loose and run in the street. We'd arranged to go to the house of a friend, a house with a balcony that overlooked the route. At some point the man of the house said that we'd get a better view in the street. Having no idea what was going on he led me through a gap in the fence and that's where we stayed. On the wrong side of the fence; the side full of bulls with sharp, gut rending horns. "It's easy", said my pal, "as they pass just climb up the fence and they'll trot by without giving you a second thought". I was wearing a big overcoat. As the bulls approached people started shouting at me for being so stupid, I was the equivalent of the infamous New Zealander who ran with the bulls in Pamplona in flip flops - the idiot guiri. When the time came the fence was full of faster more agile people than me, there was nowhere to climb. The bulls passed by. I didn't die or anything.

That same year Maggie's boss at the school where she worked was on the correct side, the safe side, of the fence. He lived in the town, he'd seen the bulls pass by on any number of previous occasions. He was leaning against the fence not even watching the bulls, talking to his friends. A bull decided to stab him through the fence. He spent about six weeks in hospital but survived. 

Confucius it ain't

In fact it was the English poet Lady Mary Montgomerie Currie who said "All things come to those who wait." In my case what came, after a wait of 12 years, was a branch of my bank in my home town.

You may wonder why that's a bonus. The root of the problem is that we still use a lot of cash in rural Spain. Spanish banks like to charge for services and you can avoid some of those by using your own bank. There's nearly always a maintenance fee unless you pay in over a certain amount each month and there can be charges for both paying in and for withdrawals.

I originally banked with the Caja Murcia, a savings bank, obviously enough, centred on Murcia. Murcia is pretty far to the right on the map of Spain and Ciudad Rodrigo is on the left, or if you prefer the technical term, the West, butting up against Portugal. I moved there in 2007. Not surprisingly there weren't a lot of Caja Murcia branches. The costs of taking money out of non Caja Murcia bank machines was mounting up so I opened an account with Banesto which was a national rather than regional set up. They had a branch in Ciudad Rodrigo and another in Pinoso. But the bank system in Spain was just about to teeter on the edge of total collapse. Banks and savings banks got bought and sold, merged and closed left right and centre. By the time I moved back home to Culebrón the Banesto had become the Santander and the branch in Pinoso had closed.

My nearest Santander was 15 kilometres from home which was, occasionally, a nuisance. Then, in June 2017, the Santander bought the Banco Popular. There was a branch of the Popular in Pinoso. Good I thought, only a matter of time. I should have known. No particular rush. This week the bank finally became the Santander. So, for the first time since 2007, I have a branch of my bank in my home town.

Braceando en el barro

It's a nice day. The weather station says 34.6ºC. It's still, and the only sounds are things cracking with the heat and buzzing flies. In Pinoso, just four kilometres way, they will be finishing off the free giant paella and the free beer to go with it. I wondered about going in but I couldn't raise the energy. I did the ironing instead.

I'm off work of course. I don't work, nor do I get paid, July or August. It suits me though my joy is always somewhat tempered by the alarming outflow from my bank account. The perennial problem plenty of time but no cash.

I'm only putting off one job. I have to phone the electric supply company to ask them about moving a pole. I've mentioned it before. The power supply to the house is being menaced by our still very healthy and free of the nasty beetle like picudo rojo, palm tree. I sprayed the tree again a few days ago and I hurt myself less and did it more quickly than ever before. I'm putting off the phone call for all sorts of reasons but I do need to talk to the neighbour first and he's not around at the moment so I can claim lack of opportunity rather than sloth.

It's not that I've been particularly slothful since finishing work. I went to Madrid to collect Maggie and we spent a couple of days there together. We made a frankly disastrous foray to Cartagena to see a couple of bands in the Mar de Musicas. We did our Hispano Luso road trip on which I finally got to see inside el Escorial (Felipe II's enormous monastery palace) after 25 years of trying, we got back to Ciudad Rodrigo after five years away, we bagged another of the fourteen Spanish National Parks at Doñana. Overall we saw a myriad of interesting and exciting things in the 2,890 kilometres we did on a route that took in stops at Cercedilla, Ciudad Rodrigo, Tabuaço, Lisbon, Evora, el Rocio and Malaga. A couple of days after getting back to Culebrón Maggie set off for the UK to catch up with her family and my life slowed down a little.

That said I went to see a paid for concert, Pastora Soler, as part of the Pinoso Fiesta and I've done a few other things there from the opening ceremony to sitting in the market square drinking gin and listening to the free soul night with a couple of pals. Life you know, drifting past.