Turn the lights off, yes, please

Back to the blog, after absence for unmentionable reasons. Nothing special to say. Back to the parish after a break, means back to folk whose proclivity to moan about “what the Church ought to do” is precisely in inverse proportion to their willingness to help with anything!! The temptation to retire and let them get on with it grows apace. I have better things to do. An incident of dreadful racist behaviour in a new small Tesco store has marred the last few days; nothing will be done about it, for there will be a lack of usable evidence.

But one bright star on the horizon - a local council has made the news because they have finally realised that most street lights are unnecessary, and they’ve started to turn them off to save money.

I have been pleading for this for ages. I devoutly hope they will start turning lights off here too, and soon. It will not only save money, it will lower the carbon footprint, and stop light pollution too. All good things. Folk have been on the TV moaning about it - but I suspect they are simply evidence of how weedy and nesh folk have become. Years ago, when I was a child, we had many fewer street lights, but we managed. Folk will just have to learn how to cope with the darkness again - it is after all, seldom really pitch black at night in England.

And I confess to another quite selfish reason for being glad of the idea of turning off street lights late at night. Years ago a cheesy and rather arrogant local councillor told me proudly how glad he was to have got more and much more powerful street lights put up on the road where I live.

He had no idea what misery his lights caused me, for there is one right outside our windows, which makes it impossible to darken the bedrooms unless you pull heavy curtains across. Often that means you must close the windows too. I would have punched him on the nose if I had realised how many years of inconvenience and airless sleep he had arranged for me. He is gone now, and I find myself curiously sad that he will never never hear when his hideous achievement is finally undone.