The only kissing I want to see at a rugby game is between the ball and the try line
The only kissing I want to see at a rugby game is between the ball and the try line

OPINIONSocietyJuly 13, 2020

I got kiss cam’d at Eden Park and it was truly horrible

Contributing writer
The only kissing I want to see at a rugby game is between the ball and the try line
The only kissing I want to see at a rugby game is between the ball and the try line

Crowd entertainment at sports games is a hard task, but please let’s stick to T-shirt cannons and on-field japes instead of watching strangers smooch, eh?

Funny kiss cam footage is a key element of any viral fail video compilation. A “she’s my sister” sign pulled out of a pocket as the camera accidentally pans to siblings instead of a couple, or a pair of celebs being called out in front of thousands of jeering fans are both classics of the kiss cam genre. But it wasn’t until I was victim to the glare of a stadium (half) full of Blues fans last week that I’d even considered the weirdness of the kiss cam and how the tradition should probably, definitely stop. 

While everyone else at that game has long-since forgotten the few seconds my mug appeared on the stadium screens, I for some reason keep falling into a day-nightmare about how it went down. I get stressed thinking about the fact my mouth was half full of chips, my hair had blown into my face paint and what if someone recognised me (lol)?

As two of the very few Highlanders supporters among the throngs of lads in blue, me and my fiance stuck out like a Speights in a craft brewery. It was one of those moments where before anything had happened I just knew, somewhere in my heart, it was going to be me. 

To say it happened in a blur would be a complete lie. In reality, the few seconds of attention lasted hours in my mind and every split second is a reoccurring terror even two weeks later. I cheersed the camera with my hot chips, turned to my fiance, opened my mouth wide, stuck out my tongue, tilted my head, licked him, looked back at the screen and it was over. The next victims had been selected.

Why, you may ask, did you choose to do that instead of just a polite, non-offensive peck? Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because it’s weird thinking about thousands of people watching me kiss. I wanted to avoid that situation, so instead I did something far more disgusting and embarrassing. 

On the come-down from the high of that three-second stardom, I could barely speak or see or hear but one thing I do remember is what happened directly afterwards. The camera panned to a group of girls, then focused on two in the group. Before they’d even had the chance to notice they were being singled out, the stadium voice appeared like God to declare that “No! Silly cameraperson. You have to choose a couple!”

What in the hetero does that mean?

On that note, how do they ever know who is together when they select a stunned pair from the crowd? Unless the camera pans to a pair who are already making out, which is a completely different issue, they can’t know.

Waving in front of my face this whole time was a Blues-branded pride flag with their logo smacked garishly in the middle of it, yet at their home ground we were all having a good old laugh about the potential of two girls having a smooch. 

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To tell you the truth, I probably wouldn’t think the kiss cam was so bad if it hadn’t happened to me. On reflection of the decision I made when the camera was pointed at me, I understand how cooked it is when you’re faced with a stadium of people looking at you. Even if that wasn’t the case, even if only a handful of people were actually watching the screen and cheering, that’s still a handful of people I don’t know putting pressure on me to share with them what would usually be an intimate moment.

The big problem with a lot of the kiss cam footage we see in stadiums and compilations online is one of consent. While some people are fully prepared to be put up on the big screen, most people aren’t. Because when they’re under pressure and caught off guard sometimes people do weird stuff, like grabbing the person next to them more forcefully than they may have intended, or not waiting to see whether the person they’re kissing wanted to do that in front of a crowd.

If you want to watch people kiss, there are plenty of ways to do that which don’t involve heading to a sports game. In fact, I’m taking a punt that nobody in that entire stadium was there to watch strangers smooch. Yet there I was, licking someone in front of a few thousand people as if being a Highlanders supporter isn’t stressful enough.

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For one hour every week Countdown supermarkets all over the country dim the lights, turn off the music, and discourage staff from repacking the shelves.
For one hour every week Countdown supermarkets all over the country dim the lights, turn off the music, and discourage staff from repacking the shelves.

SocietyJuly 12, 2020

The quiet hours: in praise of supermarket serenity

Contributing writer
For one hour every week Countdown supermarkets all over the country dim the lights, turn off the music, and discourage staff from repacking the shelves.
For one hour every week Countdown supermarkets all over the country dim the lights, turn off the music, and discourage staff from repacking the shelves.

For one hour a week the supermarket lights are dimmed and the music stops. And it’s a kind of triumph, writes Michelle Langstone.

I thought there’d been a power cut. The lights were out at the entrance, so you arrived into a kind of gloom. There was no music, and no advertisements accompanying shoppers down the aisles with constant chatter. There were barely any shoppers at all, and no staff that I could see. One old man leaning hard on his trolley came past me like a ghost, and I kept looking around, half expecting everyone to jump out and yell, “Surprise!” I had to get bread and eggs, so I carried on, wondering when someone would come round and ask me to leave. I considered whether there had been a robbery, or a death in the store, and I peered around the liquor aisle expecting to see medics crouching over someone who’d ceased to exist in the frozen section. There was nothing, just the odd person stepping carefully down the lanes of food. It was a bit like a post-apocalyptic scene in a book, where scavengers come out in the low light to pick over the remnants of a once-functioning society. Not much of a stretch in these Covid-19-filled days.

Nothing gleams as much. That’s the first thing you notice; the plastic packets lose the sheen they pick up from the overhead lights. In the confectionery aisle every second fluorescent strip was dark, and all the sugared items seemed to have lost their power. Without so many spotlights, their garish wrappers appeared less spectacular, and the lure of the Skittles, once as strong as a siren call, seemed reduced to little more than a whimper. Two women pushing trolleys with children riding in the top compartments came past me. Perhaps no older than three or four, the kids gazed at the rows of chocolate with total indifference. It was then I realised I had happened upon a Quiet Hour, the one hour every week when Countdown supermarkets all over the country dim the lights, turn off the music, and discourage staff from repacking the shelves. Autism New Zealand has supported the move, which creates a space for sensitive people to shop in a low-sensory zone. By sheer luck I had arrived, on this unassuming Wednesday afternoon, to a scene of triumph.

You can hear everyone’s footsteps, and the wheels on the trolleys squeaking. You can hear the hum of the chillers for the first time, and the sounds of industry out back that are usually shielded by the endless loop of noise. It feels like you’re in the cogs of a big machine, but you’ve got ear plugs in, and the sounds buzz with a kind of white noise comfort. Only the chilled sections remain lit; the meat and yoghurt and cheese, the bags of pre-washed salad and the bunches of herbs. Out on the floor, the piles of mandarins and bananas on special just catch the edges of the spilled light, and their colour for once is dusky, and muted.

I have never dawdled in a supermarket, but I dawdled in the quiet hour. I usually work from a list, getting in and out in under 20 minutes, avoiding aisles that do not contain what I need. On this Wednesday I cruised every single one, taking in the quiet for nearly 45 minutes, at the end of which I felt a kind of meditative peace come over me, beaming as I left, with only bread and eggs, but with a feeling of goodwill towards all shoppers. I am easily swayed by stimulus, and it’s not uncommon to shove things in my trolley on impulse, dazzled as I am by the sale displays, and the noise. I did not need a bag, I just carried the bread and eggs to the car in my arms.

I have adjusted the way I shop to be able to take part in this weekly gift to the nation’s sanity. I have attended quiet hours in several Countdown supermarkets across Auckland, and one in Rotorua as well. I like to gauge the feeling of the hush in different suburbs. I am addicted to the quiet, and I suspect I’m not the only one. Shoppers have a reverence, like they’re on their way to church. It’s the first time I’ve been in supermarkets and not heard someone’s conversation on a telephone. As if to respect the silence, people just come to shop, which is how I imagine it was decades earlier, before we had phones, and an obsession with multi-tasking that means we try to conduct business meetings from the International Foods section. As I stroll, I imagine the lights out in little clusters across the country, and in those dark spots, aisles of relieved souls just like me, tuned to the squeaky wheels and the calm.

Society