In this age of cheap no-frills flying, it seems extravagant that on the 2.5 hour flight from London to Lisbon, we were served breakfast.

I expected a bread roll — a packaged croissant, if we were lucky. Imagine my pleasure, then, in being handed a warm foil-wrapped package. I could smell something yummy inside.

I tore it open to find a toasted tomato roll. Well, actually, it was a toasted cheese and tomato roll but I didn’t find out until halfway through. In melting, the cheese must have sunk to the bottom.

Wolfgang and Rosangela showed me their silvery packages. They too had found a pool of cheese stuck to the bottom of the wrapper.

Wolfgang remarked, ‘They must heat the rolls standing up. It seems like a fundamentally silly thing to do. Don’t you think they would have worked it out by now?’

After three days working in Lisbon, Damjan flew in to join us on Friday night. He arrived at 11:30pm, a bit tired but ready to see the sights.

‘Have you had dinner yet?’ I asked.

‘Oh, enough,’ Damjan replied. ‘They gave us something on the plane. It was a ham and cheese roll.’

Wolfgang immediately asked, ‘And had all the cheese sunk to the bottom?’

Damjan looked startled. ‘Yes, actually! How did you know?’

Wolfgang, Rosangela and I just laughed.