Well, hi, I was coming in to say good morning to you!
And subject y’all to today’s bullcast 
I mean, half the enjoyment is in the nerves and half in the critique. I know this sounds heartless but most of the dead get pronounced Darwin Awards… plus, thanks to all those years of fatherly/uncly critiques, I knew what to do when I ran myself.
They’ve been showing images of the cops (national, regional and town) “cleaning up” the run of reluctant idiots. Basically, any guy who instead of walking out on his own is born out by two cops is an idiot, apart of being reluctant. Our cops are generally polite but if they say you’re leaving the run, you are. This is true of cops in general, but it also happens to be a navarrese trait. We live between the most headstrong dudes in Spain (to our north and west) and the most stubborn (south and east)… so while our reputation isn’t so wide (we’re one of Spain’s big unknowns) we tend to be, uhm, how to put this - set in our notions.
Now they’re explaining that the bulls for today are Miuras (the most famous brand, followed closely by Victorinos), which are taller and heavier than usual. A few years back the cartel didn’t include Miuras and that was close to causing riots, there were so many letters to the editor that the newspapers would publish the best one each day and a count of how many they’d received.
A San Fermín venimos
por ser nuestro patrón
nos guíe en el encierro
dándonos su bendición
That’s the prayer that’s sung to an image of St Fermin set on the wall at the top of the slope where the run begins. It says:
To Saint Fermin we come
for he’s out patron saint
may he lead us in the run
and give us his blessing
Fermin was Basque. When he was 9 and being orphaned, he was adopted by a Roman Centurion and his wife, who were Christians and whose farm (which soldiers got when they retired, hence “buying the farm” only if you die it’s smaller and deeper than if you put in your twenty years of service) was in the northern Basque area. He eventually became the first Bishop of Bayonne. He’s the patron saint, not of Pamplona, but of the Navarrese people and of the Barrio de la Navarrería (one of the three independently-walled areas with separate laws that used to form Pamplona). Because of the association with bulls and of the similarity between his bishop’s cloak and the cloaks (capotes) used by bullfighters, when someone who should by logic have been hurt badly or killed in the runs or bullfights gets off lightly or not hurt at all we say it’s been the Saint using his cloak as a capote to call the bull away. So, as one ex-seminarist Socialist politician put it when a reporter asked him if he believed in God, “if you’ve seen a miracle you have the choice to deny the evidence of your senses or to accept the Power behind it; every year I witness several miracles either in person or through the TV - your question was?”
Bulls are out. Pretty compact, no falls so far, one ox lagging behind, some fallen people, reaching the bend in Estafeta…
Fallen guys (2) and one fallen bull at the bend, has risen rapidly and without problems. That and the entrance to the ring itself are considered the most dangerous spots. Ai Mamá, in Telefónica two have fallen, one has shaved the fence (may have hit a guy) and the other has turned around after I-think-not-hitting a guy who apparently didn’t know how to go through the fence. The cowherds are there; several guys are helping (that’s how the run started about 100 years ago) but others are calling the bull’s attention back (not intentionally but just out of ignorance, you should never ever cross a bull’s field of vision unless you’re headed in the direction you want him to go and their field of vision is a lot wider than a human’s). At least two wounded from that one.
Wow, that hadn’t been visible in the first display, but one of the guys who fell at the bend had been pushed by a bull. Looks like the horns managed to stay on both sides of him, enormous capote - if the horns stayed on both sides, the blow-up of that slide will be on every newspaper’s cover. Well, OK, only local ones: national newspapers ignore the Sanfermines as if they weren’t one of Spain’s biggest tourist draws, just because they don’t happen in either Madrid or Barcelona.
Wounds report from the Red Cross: contusions, dislocated elbows and shoulders, one cranial contusion (that one is serious, they put him on a neckbrace and may be very bad), two horn stabs (both in thighs, good and it means the guy who got pushed by a bull at the bend did not get pierced).
I just noticed that when I speak of the bulls I don’t bother say who is it I’m speaking about. Huh.
Special1, sorry… I knew my family report wasn’t very clear but I was kind of stunned 
The Oldsters (aka Mom’s parents) are 92 and 93; until today they lived in the flat in Barcelona that they bought in 1938 for 999 pesetas (999 because if it was 1000 you had to pay taxes - lots of flats got sold for 999!). My female cousin lives nearby, so she would keep an eye on them. but she also made it very clear to them that she wasn’t willing to drop her life to help two old people who are deaf, refuse to wear their hearing aids and have spent the last 70 years fighting others.
Grandma is having vertigo due to an ear infection; she wanted to go back to the doctor after only two days on medication when the prospectus says you must give it at least 2 weeks before you start feeling better. Mom went, saw, and told them there was no way in Hell or elsewhere that she’d be taking care of them in their house under their rules. So Grandma said “ah, but I can’t deal with your horrible father alone, not being sick myself! Uh… do you think we could come stay with you for some time?”
So we have a combination of “haaaalllelujah, Grandma has accepted she’s not Supergirl - at 93 years old!” and “ohmyGod, will Mom be able to survive?” better resumed as “oi!”
MamaTigs rodeos aren’t Spanish 
I kid.
I may never rest again.