Hi Everyone,
A thought occurred to me the other day which has been playing on my mind ever since. I told my wife, thinking that she would just dismiss it as a load of rubbish but actually she was very interested in what I had to say (not always the case!)
Just for your information, we live in a very quiet cul de sac of maybe 70 houses, on the very edge of Reading. Anyone passing Reading on the M4 (junction 12) would probably see our houses in the distance, ours is the one with the front door that needs painting, was going to do it this summer but somehow I had other things on my mind (PCa diagnosis). Anyway it was this. I have PCa, my neighbour on one side of us had PCa nine years ago, which was sorted, but has recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. Our former neighbour on the other side of us, his wife died of cancer about 7 or 8 years ago while living next to us and the neighbour next to them, died of cancer about 5 years ago. Added to this a good friend opposite us across the road, who we've know for years, has just been diagnosed with cancer again after surviving a bout of the disease ten years ago. I hadn't even thought about it before but it does seem that out little group of houses has suffered more than most from this dreadful disease.
It would be interesting to find out about the figures for the rest of the houses in the immediate area are but I'm not sure where I would get that information from. Working for the media my first thought was that this would be a great story if it turned out to be more widespread than our little cluster of houses but I would be relunctant to publise it as I would be afraid my house price would fall if it became known. You never know, if my treatment went badly and I needed to sell, which we probably would, I'd want to get the best price for the house, so we could go and see the world, while I had the chance.
One possible cause, which I'm sure CND would suggest, is that we live less than four miles away from the Burghfield nuclear bomb factory and only eight miles from the Aldermaston nuclear research centre. In fact, some years ago, we had a monitor in our house for a period of time, to measure the radiation levels, provided by Harwell (I'd forgotten about that until I started writing this!).
I might do a bit more research to see what I can come up with but I thought I'd just post this to see if anyone else is in the same situation in the area where they live.
Steve