Since when has funeral attire included gold short shorts?
Recently I found myself running late for an important funeral, Jonah Lomu's funeral. It was an event, and my friend Jess and I were waiting to park one of the pall bearer's cars under Eden Park.
There was nothing simple about Jonah's funeral. It was a series of strange and peculiar happenings. This was one of them. This was "only" one of them, but Jess and I together experienced some truly astonishing things that week - a combination of culture and happenstance.
Trying to park a car at Eden Park is never easy. When you are part of an entourage that includes dozens of cars and several buses, with only a sketchy plan that appears to keep changing, the task is almost impossible.
In the end we simply stopped driving, threw the keys at a random man with a lanyard, and in our heels and dresses ran in to what we thought was the invited guests section for mourners.
In our confusion we went to completely the wrong area. We ended up in the rugby players section with the Vodafone Warriors, The Auckland Blues, Past All Blacks and WAGs. I looked across the park, or rather squinted, and in a far off section saw all the people I "actually" knew... I was 200 metres off my assigned seating, but I didn't care. I was just glad to be out of the stalled sombre caravan of vehicles in the bowels of Eden Park.
