Iberian Interludes

... at five thirty, the bullfight will begin, and at 3 o'clock we gather in the city center and slowly wend our way from bar to bar, up the Calle de Burgos, past the street where you live and upwards, ever upwards, towards the bull ring at the top of the hill, from bar to bar, I say, and the bota, the wine-skin fills and re-fills with that dark red fluid that will set us all baying for the bull's blood, or the matador's blood, it doesn't matter whose blood, as long as someone bleeds and the bull is butchered, torn from this life by men afoot or on horseback, armed with lances and swords ...