Strikes and Ice

I was a blackleg, a scab, a knobstick and hung my head in shame as I crossed the picket line.  Out of the 600 or so collège pupils there were 10.  I hunkered down with my class of two, hoping the union would never find out.
The week gets stranger by the day.  Over half of the cleaning staff are sick, 40% of the pupils are positive or contact cases, the boarding kids have all been sent home and there's a kind of end of term end of the world feeling about the place.
No one can get their head around the latest covid protocol in schools and everyone hates Castex which is why we're all meant to be marching through the icy streets of Foix this morning. 
I took to the hills instead.  
The coldest, most beautiful day of winter yet.  The frost refused to give Bernie's pebbles up, high streams blocked the pathways and the wood's shadows were white.