Anyone for tennis ?

Way back in April, 2010, I took a photo of the wall between Sandwell Valley and Dartmouth park. It's the top one here. Behind it are a couple of hard core tennis courts.


For some reason, which I haven't yet determined, Sandwell took it into their heads to demolish this wall and rebuild it 2 or 3 yards away from where it was. Someone said they thought it was because it was unsafe, but I don't think that can be the case, firstly because it seemed to be a dickens of a job knocking it down, and secondly because a long stretch of identical walling has been merely repointed.

Anyway, I digress.


The second photo shows the position of the new, more or less identical wall. But the knock-on effect of moving the wall was to chop 2 or 3 yards off one side of the tennis courts. Sandwell were, of course, quick to spot that budding Black Country McEnroes could,thereby, be disadvantaged. So what are the Sandwellians doing about it? They are adding a couple of yards onto the opposite side of the courts. (photos 3 and 4)

(If you take a bit off one side of a quadrilateral, and add some on the opposite side, is that what's called lateral thinking?)

A master stroke indeed.

But at no small cost, because the couple of yards that are being added onto the tennis courts are coming off the adjacent Crazy Golf course.

This course was completely relaid out less than a year ago, and part of the reconfiguration involved its length being reduced. Now its width has shrunk as well!

But I don't want to prejudge the Sandwell intelligentia here. It could well be that they have thought this through quite thoroughly, and that they have a plan to widen the opposite side of the Crazy Golf course by moving the adjacent internal road over a couple of yards.

This could easily be accomplished, particularly if the adjacent field was also moved over a couple of yards.

In fact, if the Lottery could stump up another £4 million, the whole of Sandwell Valley could be moved over a couple of yards, thereby assuring the jobs of the Sandwellians in perpetuity.