During our stay in Avignon the weather was mainly sunny but with a couple of spectacular thunderstorms and downpours, after which much debris would flow down the Rhone, including large tree trunks and in one case an entire tree. One of these storms caused us to delay our departure and we finally left on 6th September. After the last of the Rhone locks we tied up in Arles, famous for its near complete Roman Amphitheatre and as the place where Van Gogh cut part of his ear off. As luck would have it there was a bullfight in the Amphitheatre that night, so never having been to a nearly complete Roman Amphitheatre or a bullfight before, we bought tickets.
Although there is a tame Provencal version of the bullfight, this was a real Spanish corrida. It was a one-sided affair, Matadors 6, Bulls 0. Actually, I enjoyed it a lot and Sue was not as upset or disgusted as she thought she might be. However, having read Hemmingway’s biography and got half way through “Death in the Afternoon” and having now actually seen a bullfight, I think his attitude to it was probably a bit pretentious and overdone. Yes, it is intense and dangerous and cruel, but also rather sentimental at times and with elements of the tacky showmanship of, of all things, professional wrestling. It was also rather slower and balletic than I expected, the matador at times almost caressing the bull and performing a kind of hypnotic dance of death with the bloody, confused and frightened animal.
Afterwards, every cafe and restaurant in town seemed to be having a paella party, with great pans of the stuff simmering to the sound of rock, reggae and the Gypsy Kings. We went back to the boat and listened to the shouts of the drunks and the kids rattling the railings of the nearby bridge over the Rhone. We cooked a paella ready meal, which had been mouldering in our store cupboard since Calais and which somehow seemed appropriate.
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