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.