I'll dine out on that...

A few years ago I disposed of an unused chest freezer by giving it to a charity collecting scrap-metal as a fundraiser. Two burly scrap-metal merchants of questionable charitable intent duly arrived, tossed the freezer into the back of their ute, and drove off leaving a stench that I thought would linger longer than Peter Dunne. What I hadn’t realised was that the freezer, lying dormant and switched off for over a year, contained a meat pack. I had not before the time smelt anything like it. I fully expected to receive a complaint and a cleaning claim from the scrap-metal merchant and numerous complaints from those along a route which surely for a while would be a road less travelled. Neither happened. I guess the good people of Helensville thought the odour just another element in a far from rich tapestry of life more akin to sack-cloth than fine needle-work. This month Helensville suffered another loss. Porcini, the restaurant that for years had been the gild in Helensville’s fast fading lily, closed for the last time. Owners Peter and Karen had enough. There would be few who blamed them for that but many who would still regret it nevertheless. In its time the restaurant hosted prime ministers, mayors, sailors, disgraced lawyers, obnoxious individuals and excited and excitable families—my own included. I went often. What happened inside Porcini, stayed inside Porcini. The culture, the conviviality, the courtesy that permeated that place couldn’t survive outside. Not in Helensville. Not ever. There is that which lingers in Helensville. The bad and the good. My freezer odour among the former; memories of Porcini truly among the latter. Thank you Peter. Thank you Karen.