Blood Relative
Jamie stifled his yawns politely at precisely three minute intervals during the compulsory talk on blood donation, his form-teacher did know that none of his family were favourers of this quaint practice, since they had odd old-fashioned views not unlike Jehovah’s Witnesses on hygiene; to her relief Jamie did not raise these views in opposition to the speaker’s sermonising, but actually it might have been nicer if he had. Instead he obligingly recalled that: “one of my first cousins twice removed had his blood-group tattooed under his armpit. It must have hurt like b… awfully.” The speaker beamed uncertainly, and, before vaguely dragging from some recess of memory in her dim little mind what this signified, remarked that this seemed rather excessively prudential, but no doubt could have saved his life. His teacher goggled palely as he replied sadly that no, he had stepped on a ‘S’ land-mine which had blown both legs off. The speaker then remembered.
He, in his playing, generally rather expected his classmates not to pick up all his references, which made some of it more of a game between he and whichever teacher, the main enemy, usually to his private appreciation mostly. But they did this, and added it as ammunition for making his life hell, although as he expected, none knew the difference between a first cousin twice removed and a third cousin: whilst he could have claimed a diminution on the grounds that as far as he knew — and his relatives in Germany may have been only as truthful as most there feel necessary in discretion — it was Waffen rather than Totenkopf, but to him that actually wasn’t an excuse, they were all as potentially unpleasant bastards as any group of murderers. He couldn’t see why it was worse than being related to the other untold millions of traitors though: few people in these islands would not have had a distant connection to some scum who fought for or supported parliament or Cromwell among the 6 million living then: and nothing could be as bad as that.
This largemindedness was occasionally irksome for his family since this cheerful lack of reticence could fail to emphasize their absolute normality; as when during a garden party Jamie chatted amiably on not only two great-uncles who had fond memories of Poland, one of their cousins who died in Crete, and someone who deserted in Greece to start a large family, but started recalling that a more distant relative drowned as a frogman in Italy.
‘Shut up’ screamed his mother, who didn’t want people to think her entire blood relatives formed the bulk of the German Armed Forces during the last unpleasantness.
To be fair though, those who had, were generous in their reminiscence to their kleiner englischer Teufel whenever he was visiting in the Fatherland. He never judged; and was politer than their own younger generation. Who judged a great deal.
Mrs. Beeston listened disfavouringly to the teacher’s embittered commentary in the common-room: “Personally, I always thought that little… that his blood would poison a rattle-snake.” was her comment. Literally true, but this was the nearest she ever came to making a joke, one not so anodyne as to be acceptable at a party conference, and they gazed approving of her levity.
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Anyway… I can’t conceive of allowing even a blood transfusion, let alone having the more repulsive internal parts of some random stranger inserted. Chacun a son goût, of course, but it seems to be more fitted for those without a high sense of personal daintiness and those who prefer dishonour over death. A recent post in the splendidly named blog mediocracy — “‘mediocracy’ is a condition in which culture is subordinated to pseudo-egalitarian ideology” — points out one aspect of this vampiracy too little spoken about:
Do think about the fine print when you consider whether to sign up/out/whatever to organ donation.
How dead are organ donors?
Organs for transplant have to be taken from still-living bodies, bodies still perfused by their naturally beating hearts, warm and so reactive that muscle-paralysing drugs may have to be given to facilitate the surgery.
Their owners will have been certified “dead” on the controversial basis of bedside brain-stem testing, a procedure not sufficiently stringent to exclude some persisting brain-stem function and which includes no test for what may be abundant life elsewhere in the brain.
Read the rest of the post here
