Last week when in Madrid I met up with Qalaat and she surprised me with a gift of two books by Hemingway that she had spotted on my wishlist - how lovely!! And the timing just couldn't be more perfect, as I was in Madrid to go to the presentation of a new book by a photographer friend of mine: "Bos Taurus" by Ramón Zabalza. It is a book that I nearly translated, and this book in particular would have been part of my background reading. As it was, that didn't happen but I have just started reading it and will be dipping into the photography book at the same time.

Well I have truly loved this book but it has taken me an absolute age. I've been reading at the pace of a snail... Half a page a day... Such are the circumstances of life at the moment that I can't go much faster. But enjoying it so much. I wish I'd read this years ago. When I was first in Madrid there was so much more bullfighting on the tele being shown in bars, and I'd have loved to have some more understanding of it then. I am SO impressed with the level of knowledge that Hemingway developed. His Spanish must have been very good. In the end even though a good number of the words I understood, I even read all the glossary, as his explanations were so interestingly written. A huge thank you to Qalaat for this gift. As it's been with me for so many months it is now rather battered. This book is one that I'm likely to hold on to for at least a good while, and certainly until I've read Ramón Zabalza's "Bos Taurus". Judging by his anecdotal notes at the end of the book on the various British and American spectators he came across, Hemingway'd be interested to know I've actually only ever been to one bullfight and that was in Granada in December or January, when we'd gone out till 10 in the morning and so were all very sore-headed. Not the best condition to be in, especially as that's when I learnt that 6 bulls not one were to be killed, and all by novice bullfighters. Actually now I think about it I've been to one other much more (extremely) rural affair near Cuenca (we saw a poster in town and drove out to it). That was a much more fascinating and rather starkly beautiful experience and I took pictures from behind the barrera.