I am fortunate enough to live with a flatmate who not only enjoys cooking, but does it well; and one of the innumerable pleasures of living with him is the fact that he is wont to make sausage sandwiches on occasion, most notably Saturday afternoons when I am ever so slightly hung over. He made sausage sandwiches tonight (although, of course, I am hardly likely to be hung over on a Tuesday) using some rather lovely pieces of pork obtained at a butcher’s (as opposed to obtained at Sainsbury’s).

‘What do you want on your sandwich?’ he asked at one point, extracting bread and butter from the cupboard.

‘Ah,’ said I; ‘I shall doctor mine.’ Two slices of bread I placed to one side of the plate; a small helping of brown sauce I placed to the other; the sausages I situated in between, next to my fork and knife.

‘What the hell is that? That’s not a sandwich. That’s heresy!’ exclaimed Flatmate, staring at my plate in horror. ‘You’re supposed to put the sauce and the sausages in between the slices of bread, not off to one side like that. You - you’re a sandwich Cathar, with your bread and filling duality!’

And so it was decided that we are perfectly suited to be flatmates, not simply because our sillinesses match, but because we both know what Cathars were. How could I do anything other than love humanity, when such a person as Flatmate exists?