My favourite breakfast – it comes a close second to a bowl of fish ball mee from Ghim Moh market – is a slice of seeded brown bread, slightly burnt around the edges (usually by mistake but I’ve got used to it and now quite like it), spread with a nice generous layer of butter and some homemade marmalade (not homemade by me, but by someone with a patient and domestic disposition).

But butter on the table in Singapore is a real problem. Either you put the whole thing out and slowly it starts to melt, or you spread the butter on your toast whilst standing in the kitchen (I can’t stand doing this. I have to sit down). 

So when I spotted this small glass butter dish in Cirencester in December, I snapped it up, having never known something so small, and vaguely innocuous, existed for holding just the right amount of butter.   

Things bought abroad often don’t translate when you get them back home (maybe I’m just a bad shopper but I find that half the things I love when I’m travelling are actually rather questionable in the harsh light of everyday life).

I half expected this to be the case here, but it holds more than enough for a few rounds of toast….and my mornings start off much improved.

Pat of butter picture courtesy of The Guardian