Watching the daily running of the bulls through Pamplona’s narrow streets online this week has given me a wistful pang about not being there again. I once went to Pamplona’s feria three times in four years and ran with the bulls every morning. One year I took Sharon. The day we arrived, she took one look at the streets pullulating with thousands of handsome, drunk young men and did the psychical equivalent of a graceful swallow dive into their midst.
I had rented us a room in the town but she visited it only rarely and never slept there. I hardly saw her for the seven days. I should explain that when I went anywhere with Sharon at that time it was accepted that she would bestow her bountiful sexual favours on anyone and everyone except me. But I had had my brief place in the sun and adored her still. And the shameful truth is that after I was cast out of heaven, I became a sort of pander for her. So I was genuinely pleased to see this trainee social worker from Devon, passionate for animal rights, sustained by a diet of cigarettes, alcohol, weed and orange Tic Tacs, cutting a swathe of desire through the dense crowds of Spaniards, Basques, Australians, Americans and Brits at the religious gore-fest. She made one feel proud. The funny thing was that Sharon has a romantic heart. ‘You’ve got to kiss a lot of frogs before you find your prince, Jerry,’ she’d say to me in her teacherly fashion.
I encountered her once early in the morning. I was walking down the street to take up my usual position on the corner of Mercaderes and Estafeta to wait for that morning’s bulls to gallop past.
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