OH FUCK THE
BULLS ARE COMING
Yes there is no mistaking that moment
when you suddenly see the crowd part and the first of the bulls are bearing
down upon you and it is at about this point that you should have taken to your
heels! Because they move far faster than you and if you give them a chance they
will be straight by you or straight through you. Remembering at all times the
first rule of bullrunning, “If you fall down you stay
down”. Well as I move into a new decade of bullrunning,
in my fifties I am looking forward to having more of those ‘Oh Fuck’ moments in
the bullrun and it takes me back ten years to when I
came out of retirement to start running with the bulls again. So I though I
would include the article below that I wrote for the No Bullshit Fanzine to
mark the occasion.
I have now joined the 50/50 club (at
least 50 years old and 50 runs) which I can assure you, does not have that many
members. But back then I didn’t think I would get to this stage.
Coming Out of Retirement
By Graeme Galloway
It had been six years since I last ran
with the bulls, and that was a special occasion. A long time colleague at work
had for years dreamt about going to
I had started running when I first went
to the Fiesta in 1976 and I had never missed a run except when there were riots
and when I once stupidly let a job get in the way of
"I’m hip, I’m cool, we’ll fuck later!"
This is no jest; her words are etched
permanently into my memory. I just lay there thinking …. I won’t be able to
walk, let alone shag…. what fucking planet was she on! I must admit she was
good looking and I did spent the next two days looking for her, after I had
drunkenly signed myself out of the hospital three hours later ‘in order to run
with the bulls in the morning’ I even put up notices all around the campsite. I
actually did manage to meet up with her five minutes before she was due to
leave for
They cancelled the rest of the Fiesta
that year so I was able to limp back home and give my back three months to recover.
The next year I made every run, sleeping each night on the pelota
court behind Estafeta so I was up in time each
morning.
After ten or eleven years I found that
the fear was getting stronger and there was no buzz anymore, it became more and
more of a chore to get up in the morning for the run. Then I had a couple of
real close shaves and finally it just got a bit too close for comfort. I was
doing my normal run near the end of the Estafeta,
when I suddenly thought something doesn’t feel right. I cut short my run and
hit the wall and I remember thinking something is about to happen and I ran for
the fence. I could hear the screams as I moved. One of the bulls had stopped
and turned where the Estafeta widens at the end. An
American guy, Stephen Townsend made the wrong move and the bull drove into him
right outside the Casa Flores Bar. He made the mistake of trying to get up
again and the bull gored him again and again. I only saw this afterwards in the
photos as at the time I was ‘bravely’ climbing over the fence to get out of the
street. It was only seconds later I saw him being carried out past me on a
stretcher, covered in blood and afterward waiting for Casa Flores to re-open
for my traditional post-run beer. I just stared at the blood all over the pavement
and doorway and it was then that I decided that after 54 runs I would quit.
Stephen Townsend recovered, but it had been touch and go. When people deride
the saying that San Fermin looks after the runners, I
just keep quiet and think back to that premonition of danger that I had that
morning. If I had continued my run I would have been right there, where the
bull turned.
I think I had only one more run in the
next couple of years and my heart wasn’t really in it and then I ran six years
ago with my work colleague Leon. After the run he was on cloud nine.
"I fell fantastic, how about
you?" He asked immediately after.
"I’m fucked and I need a
drink." I replied.
That was six years ago. Now it was the
last Fiesta of the millennium! Whatever the fuck that meant! Most of my mates
were running, then again they were all a lot younger
and fitter than I was. I was fat, forty and fucking slow! What on earth was I
doing standing in the
Well in my defence, there were a fuck of a lot of people running that morning. In
addition the police held everybody back much longer than normal so there was an
incredible crush at the start in the
"Fuck it I thought, I’ll do it
again next year. But I’ll be fitter and slimmer and better!"