Topic of Cancer

Topic of Cancer is celebrating our first year and we marked the occasion with a Summer Social evening being entertained by Bookham’s very own steel band – Pandemonium.  The weather was kind and more than 20 of us enjoyed a really relaxing time together.

During the last twelve months we have been visited by guest speakers from national cancer charities, complementary therapists, a BBC personality with his own cancer experience and a dietician who actually prepared a pasta whilst she talked.  At our meeting in May we decided to have a break from cancer and Helen Taylor came to us from Polesden Lacey with a slide show of the history and personalities associated with the house.  She also brought some tools of trade to demonstrate the technicalities of conservation of the property and the collections.  It was a wonderful over-view of our local National Trust jewel and the members appeared reluctant to let the evening end.
On Thursday, 8th July Jen Twydell is coming back to present ideas and guidance on healthy summer dishes and we are looking forward to another tasting.  Amongst our planned future events are a local pharmacist and a local cancer charity talking about their respective roles and our friends at Cancer Research UK and Macmillan Cancer Support who have been an enormous help setting our group up, have offered to return after the success of their previous visits.

Our group is aimed at families and friends as well as those of us with a personal cancer story and we have grown to 46 members, but are always ready to welcome new ones to join or just to visit.  Sadly we also miss a couple of good friends who lost their battle but we hope we were able to give them as much as they gave us during our times together.

We have to give thanks to the owners and staff of the Preston Cross Hotel for their generous hospitality, E-business plus for the website, Geo Communication Arts Ltd for the fabulous banners, to the charities that helped us start up and to the guest speakers who all gave their time and expertise totally free of charge.  It has been a wonderful twelve months and we look forward to the next year.

We meet on  the second Thursday of the month at 8pm at The Preston Cross Hotel and you can find out more about us at www.topicofcancer.co.uk or call Nigel on 01372 456025.