Carol’s Column
So who needs blood
DRINK a pint a day, I thought to myself as I lay among the bubbling bottles. Dracula would do his nut here.
"Do you come here often?" said the tall, dark and handsome stranger in bed next to me.
"Well no, it's the first time," I remarked rather coyly. Bed chat has never been my strong point.
"It's a good colour," he observed critically, staring at my blood.
We both looked at the large bottle on my right.
"Not bad," I answered modestly, secretly being rather proud of the bluish tint I fancied I could see.
"Er, have you been doing this for long?" I asked him. I mean, one has to be polite in this kind of situation.
"Oh, for simply ages," he replied nonchalantly. "I've been a blood donor for over 20 years. I give at least five pints a year."
I was horrified. Good heavens, no wonder he looked so thin and white, his blood reserves must be at a critical level. I did a quick mental calculation — that was over 100 pints of blood he'd supplied. It was remarkable that they could still find some trickling among all that skin and bone.
"How did you get grooving," he asked, snapping his fingers in time to the rhythm of the pumping blood.
Middle-aged mothers of four don't usually groove, but I rather liked the image and started clicking my fingers in time to my own bottle of bubbling blood.
So why was I lying here bleeding away while my parking meter expired and my feet developed frostbite?
Blame it all on Bert.
Whereas other people listen to Springbok radio for fun, Bert spends his spare time recruiting bleeders for the cause.
One day, a short while ago, we met in the lift.
"Had any serious diseases recently?" he asked me, in his typical, straightforward way. A Dutchman by birth, his approach is direct.
"Your country needs you," he said.
"So, it's got me."
"Listen," he replied, "You have far more blood than you can use. And what does it do for you? Nothing. Now, why don't you take your blood and do something with it. Use it, utilise it, give it to someone who needs it."
Which was why I found myself spending Wednesday afternoon in a strange bed with a strange man having my vital body liquid extracted.
They were happy to have me.
"You look healthy enough for a grandmother," said the bright young thing who filled in my form.
Her questions were piercing. Age? Group? Sex?
The last question depressed me unaccountably, but I answered it anyway.
A charming little man with bald head and stethoscope led me to a bed and proceeded to listen to my innards.
He picked up the pickled cucumber and salami lunch fighting the muesli with yogurt and honey breakfast.
"Horrible, horrible," he said, shaking his head.
But the rest of my body excited him almost beyond control.
"Good heavens!" he shouted excitedly. "You've the veins of a mineworker."
Everyone crowded round to gaze at my superb veins — all my life I've wanted to be admired for my veins.
It took precisely a second to attach me to a large and empty bottle — a knob was twiddled, and voila, my blood gushed forth — a veritable fountain.
Afterwards I felt sensational.
Giving blood's fun, why only this morning I noticed an appeal for organs, kidneys, text cut off in photograph
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Editorial note
The clipping is trimmed above the drawing and carries no masthead, no flag and no page number; the source catalogue puts it at 8 March 1981, which was a Sunday. It sits between "You're in the army now" of 1 March and "Wine is good for chilblains" of 15 March, both of which the same contents page lists. In the drawing Dracula leans on the counter of a donor clinic under a sign reading BLOOD DONORS WANTED, a door behind him marked DONATIONS, while the clerk at the desk looks up at him. The clipping was cut to fit the album page, the last column running its whole depth and the first two alongside it at the top. The text runs on unbroken across the joins, so nothing is lost at them. The photograph is taken at an angle and the foot of the page falls into shadow. The last two lines go with it: the final sentence breaks off after "kidneys", and the line below it is both in shadow and clipped by the bottom edge of the frame. Levelling the shadow brings back the three lines above but no further. The page is marked for a closer photograph. The drawing is not read from this photograph. It was shot separately in close-up, and the caption and the signature are taken from that; that close-up is itself trimmed at the right, where the page shows the DONATIONS door in full.
Transcribed as printed. Doubtful readings:
- "for over 20 years": the figure is soft, but her arithmetic settles it. At "at least five pints a year" over twenty years it comes to the "over 100 pints" she reaches two paragraphs later.
- "organs, kidneys, [TEXT CUT OFF IN PHOTOGRAPH]": a word follows "kidneys," on the last line that will resolve, and at least one line follows that. The column's closing joke is not recoverable from this photograph.
- "How did you get grooving,": printed with a comma where the sense wants a question mark. Left as set.
- The headline is trimmed close on the right, and whether a question mark stood after "blood" cannot be told. The source catalogue gives the title without one.