Tasha Dhanraj takes the biscuit for good deeds

My cat is sitting across my chest as I am trying to type. I think this is because he knows what a good person I am. On Thursday of this week I gave blood. Charlie Sheen might have tiger blood, but now someone else has got Dhanraj blood, which I think is probably more useful to them on an operating table. Or maybe I’m wrong. Maybe tigers are all part of the blood group AB and therefore indispensable members of the National Blood Service.

Anyway, yes I gave blood. I’ve been meaning to for months but after my glandular fever I had to wait for ages to make sure I wasn’t going to be a risk. The best part was definitely the biscuits at the end – I got bourbons which I think means I gave the best blood that day.

My mum said that the worst bit is when they put the needle in your arm but that didn’t bother me at all. If anything I was surprised at how small and pathetic the needle was. I wanted some five centimetres in diameter tube that they were going to rip open my arm to insert in and then watch as the thick red liquid cascaded down like some twisted version of the log flume at Thorpe Park.

For me, the worst part was how much water they make you drink. I don’t like the process of drinking, but unfortunately I dislike the thought of dying more, which is basically the only reason I ever down bottles of Evian. The blood collectors force you to drink loads. I spent the entirety of the donation desperately needing the toilet.

I forced my boyfriend to give blood on Saturday. I had ranted onto him about how it was surprisingly not painful and how easy it was, so when he complained about it hurting it looked like I was just really hardcore. Annoyingly he’s beaten me to donating on the Bone Marrow Registry, so he’s currently parading around acting morally superior.

Lots of people aren’t blood donors and even more aren’t bone marrow donors, often because of the hassle, the pain, the idea of being listed… The reason I am registered is that I genuinely feel that as I am able to give, I have a moral obligation to. If anyone I cared about needed a donation of any kind, someone not doing it because it was ‘an inconvenience’ wouldn’t be an adequate excuse for me. That, and I do love a bourbon biscuit.