Its a sensitive subject round here. What with potatoes and sugar beet being carted from field to store or clamp, tractors and ploughs leaving fields each evening to return to the farmyard and so on. It really is impossible to avoid bringing some mud onto roads.
We do our best to clear up to avoid dangerous driving conditions but you can't get it all and inevitably surfaces are left greasy and dirty. It's good business for automatic car washers but in an autumn like this is turning out to be there are still a lot of filthy vehicles on our local roads.
I was brushing one road beside a sugar beet pad the other afternoon, flagging traffic down with a torch to try to get them to drive more slowly until the job had been completed, when I got a right mouthful from one lady driver. "You ........ farmers shouldn't be allowed to mess up our roads. You're a .........liability and its ........ dangerous", she shouted. I replied as mildly as possible that I was aware of the problem and apologised for her inconvenience but pointed out that I had to get the crops off the land so she could eat and that I was doing my best to clean up.
The last few words were almost ceratainly lost to her as, in a fit of road rage, she revved up through the remains of the mud. splattering me with some of it as she did so. Such people have no understanding of nor interest in what farmers do and shouldn't come to live in the country. But they're here and we have to live with them. And I do sympathise. I just wish they'd reciprocate.