Saints and Snow

The Ice Saints have descended on us as un-benevolently as usual and will be hanging around for the next three days.
A few years ago they brought snow, the school bus was cancelled and I had to drive up to the village while snow laden, newly leafed branches cracked overhead and landed in front of and behind the car.   I felt like a fortunate Super Mario and hoped the children appreciated the risk I was running to bring them home.
This year they have bought hard, cold rain and Nico's evacuation pipe is spewing it out into the canal.  When he first erected it I complained that he was putting practicality before aesthetics and it looked phallic to boot.  He argued that a phallus is not necessarily un-aesthetic to which I didn't entirely disagree, so he won.
The pupils have chosen today to picket  outside the school gates (they could have done it yesterday when I had lessons there and the weather was good).  Their militancy must have dissolved in the rain and even before 10 am  I watched them traipsing wetly home from my kitchen window.