I gave blood again today. I have rare and valuable blood, and was most particularly requested to give some more of it by the blood people, who called my house and sent me persistent emails on the subject, but they needn't have hounded me, because I am either a saint who likes to do good for others even at the cost of some personal discomfort or a crazy person who likes to get attention by giving blood. Only time will tell. For now all you need to know is that when asked to give blood, I mostly do.

So there I was lying on the big rubber slatted outdoor chaise longues that they use for blood donors, a needle in my arm drawing my blood rapidly down to a big plastic bladder, balancing my enormous biography of Virginia Woolf by her nephew Quentin Bell on my lap and attempting to turn the pages one-handed, so as not to disturb my blood-giving arm, when the nurse who was in charge of my blood complimented me on my ability to balance the book and turn pages with one hand. Bragging, I told her that I could also read and walk, and was drawn suddenly to the path in camp from my cabin to the lake, down which I used to walk, slowly, reading—so slowly, once, that by the time I got to the lake everyone else was coming up the hill again, free swim being over. I was at the time very pleased by this little evasion but I never thought of a grander one, never dreamed that the four weeks I spent there for three summers running, being the most unpleasant twelve weeks of my youth, could be avoided altogether, and spent somewhere better and happier. What I lacked when I was younger was, despite all my reading, an imagination.