By Isle of Wight Observer
“I’m pleased to tell you, it’s not cancer.” The consultant sounded chirpy, almost as if he’d cured me. Breaking bad news must be a strange job; doctors must relish better moments like this. Naturally, I was delighted, as were my family. Some of us had already jumped straight to the treatment phase. Several men have described their own gruesome cancer treatments, none of which sound great. Prostate and urological cancers involve highly invasive procedures. Women get used to people examining their intimate areas; we boys, less so.
I do remember what they called the ‘cough and drop’ at school. Someone – who I trust was medically qualified – sat in the nurses’ room and examined all the boys’ testicles, presumably checking they’d descended as nature intended. Years later, a boy in our family needed a minor op to help lower one of his, thus avoiding playground comparisons with one A Hitler Esq.
The urology consultant told me my PSA level is high and I have an enlarged prostate. They will repeat their investigations in six months. If you’re a man over 50, please get your PSA level checked; it may save your life. A day or two later, it dawned on me that I still had no idea what was actually wrong with me. There’s an NHS urology professor in
Basingstoke whom people speak highly of, so I’m going to consult him.
On the same day that good news arrived, there was more to come: a proposed housing development at Wellow was refused by the IW Council’s Planning Committee. The developer wanted 10 to16 new houses right next to mine, on higher ground. Provided they pay the planning application fee, anyone can apply for planning consent; it doesn’t have to be the landowner. In this case, the new homes would have dominated the surrounding properties, all of which would be overlooked. Stupidly, the law doesn’t protect you from this – or from losing a view – which surprises most people.
At heart, I know I’m not a NIMBY; our young people need affordable housing. But thanks to the high cost of land, infrastructure, money and building materials, this gets harder by the month. Coincidentally, I visited the builders’ merchant last week. A sign on the counter warned that all materials will rise in price by between 8–9 per cent this month. There was no justification offered, but the increased costs associated with employing people and Labour’s higher taxes are revealing themselves in unexpected ways.
My house sits very low in the landscape, right beside a ditch. In summer, the ditch is dry, but in winter, water from the surrounding fields quickly overwhelms it. With nowhere to go, it pours straight into my garden, flooding it. Given an hour or two, the water slowly drains into the road, flooding that instead. A neighbour opposite has previously claimed for ground‑floor flood damage. There is photographic and video evidence of this, so it came as quite a surprise when officers recommended the application for approval.
Thankfully, on the day, half of our councillors saw sense, and the chairman, Cllr Warren Drew, used his casting vote to refuse the plans. The applicant may appeal; he may try again; that’s up to him. But there’s no mains drainage where I am, no gas, no pavement and no internet other than Elon’s Starlink. We don’t have a shop. It’s a daft place to build lots of new homes.
You can design a surface‑water attenuation scheme for new houses, but where the surrounding properties are lower, the water still has nowhere to go, however slowly it’s released. Across the Island, this has been proven time and again. In Ryde, the pumping schemes don’t work when there’s a spring tide because the water has nowhere to go.
Flooding has become a part of Island life.