Giving blood on the countdown to Christmas (1982)

I've been prompted to write this by Pete Jarvis, Tim Ramson, Paul Prior and Ian Chivers.

In the 1980's, the chance of us getting a free afternoon off on Christmas eve was pretty high.
In 1982 Christmas fell on the Saturday so we decided to have a special Countdown to Christmas challenge.
The idea was that at lunch for each day of the week (Mon to Thu) we'd go the Harbour Lights for drinks - warming up for a session in Southsea on Christmas eve.
The challenge was that whatever drink you chose on the Monday, you'd have to double on the Tuesday, 3 of on Wed etc.
Some people were 'sensible' and only had a half pint on Monday.
Others dove straight into a pint of Guinness on day one.

This was fine for Mon and Tue.
And would just about have been OK for Thu if it were not for the fact that this was the also the day that the Blood vans came to North Harbour.
And being good citizens; Rammo, Paul, Pete and Chivs were all down to donate.

Suffice it to say that there were some very light headed programmers on Thursday afternoon.