I have been a 20mph sign in Rattray for just a few weeks, and already I have been called things that would make a Glenshee ski instructor blush.

I understand that change is hard. For many years, this road was a 30. Before that, I'm told, it was "whatever you could get away with". Then one morning in summer, a council van arrived, two men in hi-vis put me up on a pole, and I became the face of a national strategy. I didn't apply. I wasn't consulted. I just woke up circular and outlined in red.

Since then, I have been subjected to a daily barrage of abuse. Men in Audis glare at me. A van driver from Coupar Angus mouths something I won't repeat. One morning a Land Rover slowed down beside me so the driver could tell me, personally, that I was "the death of rural Scotland". I'm a sign. I have no pulse. Who is he talking to?

Let me say this as clearly as I can: I don't make the rules. I simply display them. I'm like a newsreader. You wouldn't shout at the weatherman for the rain. (Actually, in Perth, people do.)

And for what it's worth, I'm proud of what I do. Since I arrived, there have been far fewer near-misses outside the primary school. An old man stopped to tell me I'd "made the street feel safer." A child waved at me on her way home. A dog wee'd on my pole, which I've chosen to interpret as a mark of respect.

To my critics, I say this: you may not like me. You may not want me. But I'm here for at least 18 months under a Temporary Traffic Regulation Order, and if the trial's successful, I'm here for good. So you might as well get used to me.

And if you really can't bear driving at 20 through Rattray for 400 yards? Leave five minutes earlier. Have a coffee. Look at the hills.

They're nice hills. I see them all day.

Yours, upright and unbending,

A 20mph Sign.