Motoring is not really my thing. I am to the saloon car what Jeremy Clarkson is to fair mindedness and inclusivity – not really that interested.

Which makes this particular column something of a walk – no, a drive – on the wild side. Thanks to the Roadmap out of the lockdown, I've had more cause than at any time since before Christmas to get behind the wheel of the Taylor Trabant to do various chores, including dropping off and picking up various Taylor minors from their newly reopened schools.

As I, slowly – ever so slowly, eat up the tarmac in and around Hadleigh, I've noticed two things.

Firstly, the rashes and splashes of yellow dotted about. I'm not referring to the lovely clusters of daffodils that now seem to be reaching their apogee of jolliness. No, I mean the squiggles that Suffolk County Council's Highways workers have drawn around all the potholes that have reappeared this year.

And actually, they seem to have reappeared in exactly the same places where they were this time last year. And the year before that. All the way back to my earthly existence in the town in the sixteenth century.

This is especially bad news for residents of certain, especially benighted, streets in the town. The good folk of New Cut, for instance, must dread this time of year: not because their road is terribly bad. Rather because the parallel road, The Green is once again absolutely rutted and gutted and so drivers traverse to and from Angel and George Streets along New Cut as a convenient alternative rat run.

Pykenham Road once again resembles a First World War No-Man's Land of trenches and bomb craters, into which some of the smaller makes of car have been known to fall, in some cases lost forever.

It may be my imagination, but it does appear that the state of the roads is worst in working class parts of the town.

Perhaps it's time that the Government's Levelling Up agenda might help level some of these holes.

Outgoing County Councillor, Mick Fraser, is usually quite good at warning and informing the dayglow-jacket cladded brigade of these types of problems, but perhaps he and whomsoever his successor will be come May's elections might want to ask them to do a proper job of filling them in for once – one that lasts for more than 12 months.

Of course, there is a chance that Bolter Ferguson, the Conservative choice to represent Hadleigh at Matthew Hicks' House, sorry Endeavour House in Ipswich might be the man to fill these enormous cavities – perhaps with any spare election literature he might have left over?

Mention of Bolter brings me onto my second transport related observation. Bolter drives a car with a very distinguished personalised number plate. And it does seem to me that there are far more cars being driven on our local roads that are marked out by non-standard plates. It's as if unable, because of the Coronavirus pandemic, to spend their dosh on holidays to Cancun or the Seychelles, such folks have gone the full individualist and splashed out the spare readies on their own little mobile ego- adverts.

But isn't this neediness rather self-defeating? With so many personalised plates around haven't they all become, well, rather common? This is echoed a while back by The Daily Telegraph's motoring correspondent who said "They are total vanity and incredibly naff." Whoops – not the desired effect, presumably.

But there's more. It appears that drivers with personalised plates are also revealing themselves to be pretty rum chumps at best and sociopathic fruitcakes at worst.

The prosecution calls no greater an authority than……the Car Throttle website.

This resource for petrol/diesel/hybrid/battery et al-heads asserts boldly that: "The psychological studies say that the personalised number plates, rear window stickers, and furry dice are the indications of aggressive drivers who are biased towards road rage.

There's more. Apparently "taking the polls into consideration, the personalised registration plates are the features that are disliked by the motorists about other drivers. Most of them have given their opinion by saying that those who spend money on customised number plates are suffering from self-obsession."

But maybe we shouldn't be so hard on these drivers. After all, their rather desperate need to standout does net the Treasury an awful lot of cash – running into sums of ten figures per year.

But wouldn't it be a form of appropriate justice if the Government decided to increase the tax due on such plates to bung to the likes of Suffolk County Council to finally fill their holes in for the longer-term.

That way, the majority of us can wave at the personalised plate purchasers secure in the knowledge that their vanity is, in fact, a public good?