No Nookie for Foxes

ex-Courier Countryside Column 22 March 2013 under cryptic headline:

"If we're talking tennis, love means nothing for foxes"

It was warm enough to appear in shorts the other Monday.  A few hardy souls had risked removing jog pants earlier, but I like to wait until the sun actually heats the court.  We’re talking tennis.  Our Monday morning sessions, locally regarded as being for the retired, self-employed or lay-abouts (the latter probably being my category) usually manage to attract eight vaguely willing participants.

I must say I enjoy playing more now I’m off the club committee.  I served seven years, got our website up and running and instigated on-line booking.  But I failed to get us floodlights.

We have a fantastic junior section and great coach.  But on winter evenings they can’t use their own courts and have to decamp to floodlit ones at an institution a couple of miles away, without toilets, clubhouse or child protection facilities.

I just didn’t anticipate the furore our planning application would cause.  The courts are pretty rural with views out over the Weald.  But round here light ‘pollution’ is a major issue.  We have no streetlights.  Villagers argue they would stop us seeing stars and no considerations of  public safety are countenanced.

Thus even low-level court lights with minimal ‘spill’ were opposed and voluminous letters of objection sent to the planners.  Perhaps the most extraordinary argument was that lights would prevent foxes mating!  Quite why the Renards couldn’t wait until after 9.00pm – or even move a few meters away out of the lights’ ambit - I couldn’t fathom.

Especially as foxes round here are regarded as a major pest – certainly by anyone keeping hens – and the ban on foxhunting is vigorously opposed.

Personally I’m not necessarily against killing foxes if deemed necessary,  though I am uncomfortable about people taking overt pleasure in the process.

Anyway our application was rejected. Probably more because we’re in an area of outstanding natural beauty than because we would be denying Foxes nookie.  But when I leave the clubhouse at night and trigger half a dozen neighbours’ ‘security’ lights I do wonder if perhaps people are a tad myopic when it comes to change.

Spring had clearly not arrived and the following Monday’s game was played in a blizzard. I thought about proposing a roof, possibly retractable, but I’m not sure the locals would go for it.  Even if it did shield the lights!