Giving blood

I like living in Spain and I ofen find myself defending its institutions and methods against other Britons as they moan about this or that. But I am a bit fed up with the Blood Service.

I've been turned down twice by the blood people in Alicante province because they don't trust British blood. The first nurse who turned me down put it so succinctly; "Mad Cows".

Nonetheless, I heard an appeal to the immigrant population in Murcia to give blood. Now Pinoso is oly 3kms from the "County" border with Murcia so I thought I may as well ask them if they wanted my blood. I sent them an email about 10 days ago. I expected the answer to be no but I also expected a reply. So far nothing. So my second email was a little less formal. It started "Are you having breakfast, or is it siesta time?"

Actually I sent a snotty email to the tourist people in the local town of Petrer too.

It said "I have a bit of a problem with the "What's On" calendar on your website. It's not much like a calendar is it? If it were there would be some dates in it.

I'm English and because of that my family hasn't been attending these events since time immemorial. There's a bit of a test of a good advert - who, where what and when. But maybe the idea is to keep it a secret - just for Spaniards."

I appreciate that my Castilian may well be dodgy but I'm also pretty sure the recipients would get the gist of my messages. A "sod off" wouldn't have caused me much grief but being ignored is.