As I said in my original post, I am aware of Executive dining (or holding your meal as it was put). My own experience is that there is usually a gap between having first drinks and warm nuts served and the dinner service commencing. In this case, there was no break at all. The tray was just put down and the nuts put aside, no offer of wine with the meal, because most still had their drinks.

On most previous flights out of Heathrow, the meal service will usually last until off the coast of Iceland. This time, even with my delaying dessert for 15 minutes or so, we were nowhere near Iceland. It was all very rushed, as if we were dining in an overbooked restaurant and they wanted the tables for the next guests, except we weren't going anywhere for another seven hours..