Two rural things reduce incomers from urban areas to various degrees of apolexy: Country odours-eg Slurry and muddy roads. This week end it is the state of the roads which I am sure is raising blood pressures in certain quarters and will no doubt feature in the Community Council next time round. Farmers are responsible for keeping roads free of mud around the entrances to their fields. With recent rain and such activities as winter ploughing or spraying the fields are wet and tractors leave great swathes of rich mud all over the road and this gets spread around a bit by more rain-11mm last night. And the farmers seem not to have done much about it in many cases.The car washes in Berwick do a roaring trade and the more frugal villagers many of whom a real country folk, not urban incomers, will spend hours washing their cars outside their houses thus adding to the local mud supply. Trouble is if you take your car to Berwick it is just as dirty by the time you get back and any journey over a mile or two out of Hutton will have the same effect. Soon you start breaking the law as your rear registration number becomes illegible. A Flanders and Swann Hippopotamus would love the Merse at present. If you get the literary illusion.
