One tries to live the fiestas as best one can and as well as one is allowed. Working…….
Having to live the best carnival in the world with tango eyes and seeing the bulls from the top of a bell-tower. One is on the perimeter of the partying, on the borders of the programmed shows and spectacles……walking on a cheap tightrope at the edge of the action and the view of it all. One step forward, another step backwards, tied to the tightrope of that uncertain age when one begins to be a little old for one part of the program and a little too young for the other part.

During Sanfermines an unhealthy envy fills one for all that one would like to be and do, for it will never come to happen. Half a lifetime beseeching the saint, as he is our patron, and for what? All the Saint does, year after year, is put the long finger on the requests, puts some spanners in the works, and makes some celestial cutbacks on the pleas so that it is all enough to make one want to turn one's back on the faith.

An envy of the "maestros" of the Pamplonesa Brass Band at any place and at any time, but especially when they play "El asombro de Damasco" on the way back from the saint's chapel. But as for music…..not a drop of talent, not a drop...even on the Mayor's guitar. Of all the instruments, all the uniforms, all the score sheets and other gadgets of the municipal band, the only thing that I could find a use for would be the conductor's baton, and by a use I mean eating a plate of rice on the banks of the Mekong Delta with the aid of the baton.

An envy of the "divas" of the bull-running who stand so poised with their newspaper at the ready, as they pace out their area, look up and look down to the left and to the right and when the run is over they leave the corral giving off the nourishing smell of a bull as they enter into the photos of the face of the history of the Sanfermines. Unlike yours truly, who only uses the newspaper down at Mercaderes to have a look at the divas from the previous day and to make a flurried attempt at running the bulls, totally improvised and scared out of his wits without any sense of direction, with no style or grace, and without noticing any sense of having gone through any kind of great square frame however big it might be.

One would like to have carried and danced the giants, to be a cleric just for once, in the procession on the seventh, or perhaps to be one of the councilors in the procession of the fourteenth. It would be wonderful to be Tonetti in the circus, a steward at the bull pen, even be "Espartaco" the bullfighter in the ring. Or could I become a lofty president of the bull-fight for a day? I would love to be a trumpet-player at the afternoon fight or maybe be the person responsible for letting off the fireworks display some night at the Ciudadela… even sell some hot fritters at the Mañueta shop….do a mime at some street corner…be a bull-breeder at the Apartado… one of the kilikis at the Teresiana's courtyard…maybe be Osinaga at the Gayarre…be Guerra (Juan Luis) at the dance of the Burgos…become a foreigner in the Marceliano….find a space among the peñas, become the biro emperor in Paseo Sarasate…a photographer on the fence during the bull-run…be awarded the ensign of the Napardi club, become a French-Basque for the Vasco-landesa trials at the bull-ring … smoke a large cigar at the bull-pens… Possibly be a skilled surgeon at the Emergency Unit….or a traditional singer at the Pocico or a tenor in the Sagaseta choir. Perhaps be one of the bull-drovers who bring up the bulls to the pen on the eve of the bull-run….all those things and more, much much more.

No chance. Just another year going green with envy with the look of someone who has been run over by the ice-cream float. And that mood of the lost romantic poet, a bit sour and down-at-heel….looking like the melancholy Jaques for whom even the wine is sad.