Blood letting

Today's session turned out to be curiously ... bloodless. Actually, no it didn't - there was the brunette who looked a bit like

I, Claudia

Claudia Winkleman and she was drinking her tea, fine, and everything and then she just said, "I want to be sick" and we all held our breath (and our own plastic cups of tea) while she decided whether she was fibbing.
 
She wasn't fibbing, but then she wasn't sick either. There's a slice of you that says hah hah this is where I score Brownie points, leap up to help her, put her into the crash position and administer the Heimlich manoeuvre all at the same time. Yay.
 
Instead at least four highly trained nurses were at hand and they'd whipped out a screen before you could say syringe. We gingerly placed our cups back on the table and I returned to my custard creams. It used to be TUC biscuits

but heck knows where they've gone; it's ages now since I saw a TUC biscuit at a blood donor session.
 
I've already told the story of how Dave got me into giving blood and I'm sorry now it took me quite such a long time to make it a regular occasion in my calendar.

Last thing: we were issued with a new set of instructions today to help you relax while you're being drained. Its thought is that if there's a diversionary activity you can undertake while 470ml are being leeched out of you you're less likely to feel faint. Huh. Didn't help Claud. Here goes: you clench your buttocks and legs together over five second, and release the clench over ten. You try it. All I managed to get was a seriously sidelong glance from a nurse who wondered why I was trying to point my knob at the ceiling.