IT HAS been a quiet week in Hoolet, like so many of late. Probably the biggest excitement was the discovery of a diabolical pothole, at the top of the moor by the field of Belted Galloways. After snow and deluge, the herd is looking a little shop worn and scruffy, but seeing them is a highlight of the day.

The sturdy woolly calves are beginning to show a bit of independent spirit, while the mothers munch steadily, stoical in the face of winter gales and rain, which hit them broadside. When the snow was thick on the ground, the cattle moved to a place of greater shelter, and only one could be seen from the road. Standing out against the trees, its white cummerbund made it look as if an artist had begun to airbrush it out.

Sadly, the demon pothole, which has been getting deeper and deeper, is badly placed if you hope to catch a glimpse of the Belties as you drive. Instead of looking in their direction, you need to swerve into the opposite lane, just at a point where it’s impossible to tell if something is heading your way

The other morning, when the hole was so deep you could have paddled, a car had pulled in shortly beyond it. The roadside was strewn with the contents of its boot, and the driver was replacing the front tyre while his passenger stood by and watched.

This was not the only vehicle to fall foul of the hole, it seems, and complaints were voiced. Two days later it had been filled, the council having despatched its rapid response unit. The cattle grazed on, unconcerned by the human calamities nearby, although perhaps they should not be so laid back.

I’ve twice seen an upturned car that has careered off the road and landed on its roof in their field after taking the bend too fast. A little further on is what Hoolet’s roving litter-pickers call Car Crash Corner, where at weekends or on frosty mornings you could open a book on the odds of finding a wreck nestled amongst the trees.

Potholes are a perennial blight in the countryside, but are especially bad this year when snow and ice have turned tarmac into crochet. Local drivers, wise to the hazards, jink this way and that, like children avoiding cracks in the pavement.

In generations past, these craters wouldn’t have posed such a problem, given that most folk travelled by foot. And despite the abundance of romantic novels in which ruts send horse-drawn coaches tumbling into the ditch, felled by runaway wheels and broken axles, in an area like ours speed would have been a comparative concept. There would have been plenty of room and time for everyone to negotiate the rougher stretches without the risk of road rage.

Not that we should patronise our forebears as slowcoaches, simply because they could not go from nought to 60 in seconds. In many ways they were far more dauntless than we are when it comes to travelling. Shepherds would go out in blinding storms to rescue sheep, and pedlars, drovers and farmers undertook journeys that seem near suicidal by our standards. Even those who did indoor jobs, like schoolteachers, midwives or lawyers, might walk or ride miles to and from their work in conditions that would persuade me, at least, to stay put.

I remember reading about one young Perthshire teacher who would cycle 20 miles to her rural school near Glen Lyon on a Monday morning, returning home on Fridays. She arrived early so she could get the fire blazing before her pupils arrived in sopping shoes and socks, and before lessons began gave them bread and jam with cocoa, knowing they would not have had breakfast. Once she was pitched into the ditch by a passing “young spark” in his motor car. He did not stop to apologise. She seemed unsurprised at such treatment.

There are more than a few young sparks on the Borders roads, although it’s Land-Rovers and other 4x4s that have a habit of getting close enough to examine the contents of my back seat. They are as nothing, though, compared to the perils of losing a wheel on a stretch of road that, the day before, had been smooth as a runway.

The way these sinkholes seemingly open overnight reminds me of the landscape of Yellowstone National Park, smouldering with pent up thermal pressure, which causes the earth’s crust to rip open without warning.

Only one of the Eildons was volcanic, so there’s no threat of Old Faithful suddenly erupting on the way to Melrose. But potholes are alarming enough in their own way. Within six months of moving to Hoolet, I acquired two flat tyres, compared with one in the previous 25 years. This happened shortly after passing my test and before I learned never to take the wheel while contemplating the meaning of the universe.

Potholes apart, the Hoolet days are drifting into each other. A few mornings ago, it was the sound of Euan McIlwraith talking about siskins on Radio Scotland that alerted Alan to the fact it was the weekend and not Friday. He quickly updated me too.

Crossing the road one afternoon, I stood back to allow a farmer’s wagon to pass. Pulling a trailer, it rattled by at the now obligatory 20mph. In the back were the carcases of two large sheep, their fleeces nicotine brown, hooves pointing in the air. I’m always surprised by how spindly sheep’s legs are compared to the bulk they hold up. They remind you of the lambs they were, not so long ago.

It was a melancholy sight, but not unusual. This is a perilous season for sheep, who have a talent for dying at any time of the year, but never more so than during lambing.

More cheering, though, were the sheds on a nearby farm we passed on a midweek walk. Fluffy ewes jostled the bars, looking as if they’d come straight out of the washer- drier. They were lucky to be out of the driving rain, and even luckier that the farmer had left a radio among them. The strains of a symphony – Mahler or Mozart? – filled the yard. How better to keep expectant mothers calm as the maternity ward beckons.

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