Superstition

It was a birthday party and I don't get out often so I put on my black swan tutu, rubber boots, yellow rain coat and souwester and we walked to Polfages.
The path seemed too easy along the ridge so we added another hill but the rain turned horizontal and the Cers made our hands redundant.  
I staved off a mutiny in Lafage (Mu was right though, it was a shit idea) but we only had 3kms left to do so we carried on.
Tutus aren't water proof and it was a crumpled, sodden Odile and duckling who were ushered into the house.  
They shoved a glass of Blanquette into my hands and me onto a stool by the fire.
All night long the little motes that presage a cold ferreted around my nose, throat and eyes but I batted them off along with sleep and emerged into a still wet, cold, dark world for my first lesson of the week.
The morning was endless.  Class sizes were decimated because of COVID outbreaks and school buses unable to get to the villages cut off by flooded roads.  
The photocopier, video projector and DVD player had gone down with their own pernicious virus and the rain kept falling.
I staggered back to the moulin for lunch where Nico had left an open umbrella under a ladder.

The canal is roaring beneath us and the river has occupied the fields.

My grandmother would have crossed herself, saluted, sent prayers up to heaven and said 'I told you so'.