There are many things I've never understood - electricity, string theory, the popularity of golf - but near the top of the list is the reverence for the goodness of the Good Samaritan.
Last night, 8.30, and I was replete with twice cooked melting belly of pork. You should try it.
The twice cookedness consists of seething it for an afternoon in a bubble bath of anything in the pantry with Asian lettering on the packet, then, when it's plump with eastern savour, peeling the fat skin off and lobbing it to the dog and basting what's left with soy and half a hive of honey and putting it in the oven till it's baked black and sticky or as close to black and sticky as you can get before the fragrance forces you to haul it out and lay it on a bed of rice and sprinkle it with chopped spring onions and carve yourself a chunk - no, carve is wrong, because as promised the thing melts - so you just ease the fibres of the flesh apart and, thinking kind thoughts of the pig that went to meet its maker to gratify your greed, you lay it on the tongue and sigh with sensory indulgence.
I ate it all. The whole great slab of belly. The three meals worth of twice cooked meltingness, and drank a riesling with it, Main Divide, which was as aromatic lovely as the flesh. And then I lugged my girth to the armchair and collapsed among its cushions. At which moment the phone rang.
These days I'm fat to the point of struggling to leave a deep armchair and reach the phone before the caller reaches the conclusion that I am either out or dead. But the phone was on the table by the chair. Hello, I said.
It was the World's Happiest Man, the man you never see not smiling, the man who'd giggle on the gallows.
He had a problem. Reversing back down Helen's tricky drive he'd turned the wheel too soon perhaps distracted by a sudden extra burst of happiness which dropped a front wheel down a little slope and thrust a back wheel up into the air and suddenly his van was stuck and Helen's drive was blocked and Helen had to leave to fetch her sister from the airport and he was really sorry to bother me at this time in the evening when I'd no doubt been chowing down on twice cooked pork or similar, but was there any chance perhaps that ... ''I'm on my way,'' I said, and came as close to leaping from the chair as I am capable of coming these days.
I almost leapt for two clear reasons.
One was that the request came from the World's Happiest Man, whose limitless good cheer endears him to everyone but golfers. The other was the chance to feel the joy of coming to someone's aid. It's as addictive as pork belly.
Why I cannot tell you. Perhaps it serves some evolutionary purpose, the strengthening of the tribe or some such. Whatever it is, this pleasure in helping, this goodsamaritanship, is every bit as selfish as it's good.
''Come on, dog,'' I cried and he leapt to it from in front of the fire with all the zest that I'd leapt to it from the armchair, though for different reasons. He knows nothing of the selfish pleasures of goodsamaritanship. He works only on the principle that something happening will bring more joy than nothing happening.
So summer or winter, day or night he's up for anything. That's optimism for you. That's blind hope. That's the wise unwisdom of dogs. Round the steep hillside we drove, skulking the back streets for reasons of riesling, past windows all blue with the light of the telly, and so to Helen's and a van skewed broadside over the drive.
Out jumped the dog to greet Happy and Helen and then piss in the hedge while Happy hooked the towrope over his towbar and I hooked the other end over mine and then he got into the van and I got into the car and Helen stood with eyes made wide by gratitude for manliness, or so it seemed to me, and on went the revs and off went the brake and the rope grew taut and the knots held and the van rocked and I thought it would tip, then away it came and Helen cheered and the dog barked and Happy, if possible, grew even happier and Helen said what a darling I was and a manly one at that and as I drove back a few minutes later still glowing from praise and derring do I said to the dog as he leaned against me, ''This Good Samaritan rap,'' I said, ''I do it for me.''
Joe Bennett is a Lyttelton writer.
