The Nun

MY wife and I recently visited a shop and directly in front of us in the queue was a nun who was in the process of buying around twenty or thirty boxes of cherry liqueur chocolates. The threefold vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, it seems, do not include abstinence from the mouth-watering delights of Portuguese confectionery.

There are four conclusions to draw from this unexpected encounter with Catholic consumption:

(a) the local abbey has degenerated into a den of iniquity for unrepentant gluttons,

(b) the chocolates will be donated to the Protestant Diabetics Society as part of a general sectarian cull,

(c) they are intended to be a New Years’ offering to Saint Cadbury, or

(d) they will be fed, as my wife suggested, to local children in order to improve the flavour of the meat.

They do like to fatten them up before they kill them, you know.