What highway engineers do at parties

Tell someone at a party that you're a highway engineer and you'll get one of three reactions.

The first is a polite nod and a sudden need for another drink. Fair enough.

The second is a question about potholes. Specifically, their pothole, on their road, which has apparently been there since 2009. We don't fill potholes. We nod sympathetically anyway.

The third, and our favourite, is 'Oh, so you're the ones who put the roadworks in!' Usually said by someone who sat in temporary traffic lights that morning. We don't take it personally. Somebody has to design the thing being built behind those cones, and on that occasion it might well have been us.

What's harder to explain over a glass of wine is how much thought goes into the bits nobody notices. The kerb that's exactly the right height for a pushchair. The crossing that's in the place people actually want to cross, not where it looked tidy on the plan. The junction where you never think 'that was close', because it was designed so it wouldn't be.

The best compliment a highway scheme can get is silence. No near misses, no complaints, no letters to the local paper. Just people getting where they're going.

It doesn't make for thrilling party chat, we'll admit. But next time you glide through a junction without a second thought, spare a moment for whoever drew it.

Then tell them about your pothole. They'll nod sympathetically.