blue plastic gloves, for hygienes sake!

Leave the cafe in the Institute for Advanced Studies behind, go down the steps and cross the vast concrete area in front of the department of Engineering.  There is a a small truck parked in front of the building, a sign on the side says that it is from the blood donation service.
Inside the building, the floor of the high lobby is covered with hundreds of students, all on their various ways from or to their midday meals, or may be lectures, or maybe just hanging about. It is noisy and full of people, all young, all eager, all in a hurry.
Pass the crowds, and there is a desk.
Show the identity card, hand over the little blood donors card, this vanishes into a card reader. The young woman at the desk explains that most of the details on the necessary forms will be filled out automatically, it is just a matter of waiting for the printout. She smiles, she is unsure as to how much she has to explain, she is eager to please, and yet surprised to see such an older person giving blood.

Take the forms to a table, with partitions to ensure privacy in front of every seat. Fill out the forms, be accurate, no HIV, no surgery in Great Britain, no residency in the UK, no HIV, no hepatitis, no indiscriminate sex with multiple partners, no heart problems.
It must be fifty questions, fifty ticks in little boxes on the freshly printed paper.

Take the forms to the next queu, sit down, show the identity card, the blood donors cart, at the request of the man behind the desk bare the lelft arm. Then sign both of the papers
A short pain in the little finger, and a small plastic holder in the mans gloved hand goes red with blood. The thing is pushed into a machine, and almost immediately some figures appear on a small alphanumeric display. The man makes a note on one of the pages, then hands the whole sheaf of pages back.

Stand in the next queue and wait. There are interview desks set up behind partitions, at each one of these a blood donor is being asked questions related to the forms, and getting their blood pressure taken, an inflatable band around the arm.
A young doctor pushes a probe into the donors left ear, quickly the body temperature is taken, and questions are asked as to the morning pills that the other doctors ordered.
All being well, off to the next queue.

Here, a  woman, looks at the passport and wishes a belated happy birthday. She is friendly, and she is tired. She has a page with self-adhesive numbers, she sticks these one to every page of the forms, one to each of several small tubes, one to each of several bags. She is very fast.
Then she smiles, says wait for ten minutes afterwards, and says to lie down as soon as a couch is free.
Wait in the next queue.

After about five minutes, shuffle to the head of the queue, then a couch is free.
Put the bag down beside the couch, and wait.

There is a young woman in a white coat, her head ctopped short on one side, long on the other, dyed green and red. She has small beads and pins and rings pierced into her face for decoration.
An astonishing appearance in her white coat.
And blue plastic gloves, for hygienes sake!

A young woman in a white coat and a Muslim headscarf comes over to the couch. She says that she will put the bag underneath the bed, so that if there is a spillage it will not get soiled. She takes the left arm, and puts a band around the upper arm. Then she swabs down an area inside the elbow.
There is a short pain, and then, looking down, see that there is a thick needle in the vein and that the tube has turned red. The woman is experienced, there is no mistake and no difficulty placing the needle.

Say that she has done the job well.
She smiles and says thank you.

And the blood flows for five minutes.

Hope that it will help somebody on their way.