Back then you’d have dinner next door one night, have your mates over to yours the next. No one had much money then, so no one ate out much. A couple of times each summer, we’d have fish’n’chips in the car on our way back from the Helensville hot pools. And then a Chinese takeaway opened up in Glen Eden (Mum occasionally succumbed, remonstrating with herself afterwards for her laziness).
But once — sometimes twice — a year, the big one: we’d be going to the Hut.