(no subject)

Wore my Comic Relief T-shirt (the Beatles one) to the office this morning, drawing admiring remarks from Lorna (who said she wished she'd got the Madonna one from TK Maxx), Jane and Sue #3. Charlotte also had the spirit, wearing Comic Relief deely-boppers; later she passed round a bag of small spherical red chocolates - "red noses", she smiled - though I had to politely decline, having given up the choc for Lent. On the phones, I got two women within the first hour who were both somewhat antagonistic, though at least they completed the interviews. It was calmer after that.

Phil stopped by the water cooler when I was there to ask what I thought of "our hopeful for Eurovision."

"Love, love, love her," I said, whereupon Phil said "good" and rapidly vanished around the outside corridor, though he did say over his shoulder as he went "She had the best voice of them all."

A letter dated Monday, with my original Alliance & Leicester Customer ID - the one now invalidated thanks to the stupidity of their customer service line - arrived today. Bloody rotate.

(no subject)

At the blood donation session, the lady who did my preliminary health check said the sample of blood from the pin prick was "going the wrong way". She asked if I'd ever had any problem with my iron levels, I said no. She took a second sample; that one sank to the bottom of the test tube like it was meant to. She said as the first one, though it floated up, hadn't touched the top, I'd be OK to donate.

At least that was the plan. It wasn't long before I was called. As often happens, the carer had trouble locating a vein; eventually another, more experienced carer found one after bending my arm and made a pin prick, but when she came back moments later to install the whole device she had trouble finding the prick. In the end she had to put a cotton bud under the needle to get it inserted, but told me "it had escaped" - I never found out what "it" was - so I might not be able to complete the donation. I started off promisingly, but after some time a red light came on, meaning my donating had slowed to an unacceptably slow rate, so two carers came over and said I'd come close to the full amount but my donation would have to be aborted. Again the explanation they gave was "it escaped" and that a bruise had formed. They seemed convinced that I was physically hurting - I wasn't, but it took me quite some effort to convey that message - told me I might develop quite a big bruise and gave me a leaflet about bruising, before giving me the usual advice about leaving the plaster on, not getting off the bed too soon and taking it easy with that arm the rest of the night. I let out a deep impatient sigh. The only response that got was another inquiry as to whether I was in physical pain.

"No, fed up."

"I'm sorry," the carer said, and added that occasionally, though not often, a donation goes wrong and this was one of those times. I'd gone through all that, all for buggerall, and yet the idea appeared to be that I should just rest on the bed, get out of there and forget the whole business. Somehow that seemed inadequate. After I'd got off the bed I just hung around the foyer for a couple of minutes, with that 'nothing to do, nowhere to go' feeling. One of the other carers asked me whether I'd like to make an appointment for next time. I went over to the lady in charge of that, and as I hadn't brought the relevant half of my letter I had to hang around her desk until she found my health check questionnaire before she could book me in for August.

Bloody rotate.