A POST ON FACEBOOK reminded me of something that happened about 27 years ago in a country east of France.

We were staying with a German lady, who used to become easily stressed. One day I was sitting in her living room whilst she was preparing a meal in the kitchen nearby. Something must have been going wrong because I heard her shouting “cheese is nice” in an angry voice. She repeated these words over and over again.

I like cheese, but could not understand why she was expressing a liking for cheese so angrily. And then the penny dropped. It dawned on me that she was not talking about cheese, but about Jesus Christ. In her perfect but Germanically pronounced English she was saying what sounded like “cheese is nice” but in reality she was cursing by saying “Cheesus Christ”

The posting on Facebook showed Joseph and Mary looking at Ababa doll in an opened Amazon delivery package. The caption to the picture was “Bloody hell, Alexa, I ordered baby cheeses”.