But it wasn’t just a public warning, it was a question addressed to a person who had inflicted a particular injury — that of infidelity.
“Whose man next?” it asked, in vibrant spray paint on the streets of Wigram.
The words, appropriately written in scarlet, were sprayed with a clear hand by the aggrieved party, the neat typeface betraying a determination born of anger.
The message was written on The Runway, one of the main avenues in Wigram Skies development — and it wasn’t the only one.
The area immediately around the post is industrial, home to Skellerup and the Original Foods Bakery factory – which quickly became noticed online as the intended workplace, with multiple similar posts reportedly on the site.
The community’s Facebook page hastened to fill this information vacuum with shock, speculation and praise for the “pretty tidy tagging”.
“Cougar at large,” said one excited Wigramite, while another made the wild jump that the author was “probably a teacher” because the spelling was correct.
Others questioned the punctuation, arguing whether it should have been written as “who is” rather than “whose”.
For the record, it shouldn’t have happened, but the discussion nearly derailed the comment thread.
“It sounds like someone has been sleeping,” said another local, who said the obvious but put the comments back on track.
“I hope she sprayed her husband’s car,” one local woman offered, while another unhelpfully wrote, “Haha shame!!!”.
The furor even drew Andrei Moore, a Waipuna Halswell-Hornby-Riccarton community council member, who responded with “crikey” and “yikes” and vowed to go after the city council.
“Okay, so after a lot of comments I think we’ve established the following:
- 1 – Nobody knows anything.
- 2 – The spelling and grammar is correct.
- 3 – It is very neat writing for spray paint.
- 4 – Someone has to contact the municipality to have it removed.”
The community-oriented New Zealand Herald did just that, only to be told by a council spokesman that “the graffiti had been removed by our contractors using a water jet”.
They did note that “remnants may still be visible,” a fitting end to an incident that will likely linger a lifetime, in at least one marriage.
†By Chris Marriner