Our family car, for instance, sports a sticker of this flag which we purchased for a modest price when visiting a local stately home- and plenty of other vehicles do the same. I even bought a big actual flag of this - on impulse - then didn't know what to do with it, so ended-up by draping it on the wall of my office.
Since this is not any kind of campaign or political movement, I can only suppose it expresses a general but seldom-articulated love of the county of Northumberland - which is indeed a county that is easy to love.
The effect of seeing this flag unexpectedly, as I go about business in the city, is to give a lift of the heart and a breath of cleaner air - it is a small and secretive ray of hope.
Just a thought but maybe it is another level of identity now that Britain seems lost and the cross of St George is mostly associated with tattoos and football. Here in Lewes we have our own flag flying from the castle along with the sussex martlets. Maybe this will be where we hold out longest , the last bastion of anglo saxon against the new britons. There certainly seems to be a process underway where more and more money from London is spent on modest houses that are seen as remote from the vibrancy and excitement that mass media see as the pinnacle of civilisation.
ReplyDelete@Y - The phenomenon of spontaneous (grass roots) local/ county patriotism is not universal - for example, it is more evident in Northumberland than in Durham, in Yorkshire (the White Rose) than in Nottinghamshire.
ReplyDeleteProud to see this flag as a sticker displayed on cars on the M4. Colin Turnbull exiled geordie from Lobley Hill and knew a Bruce Charlton
ReplyDelete@Colin - "knew a Bruce Charlton" - It wasn't me; I was schooled in Somerset, although conceived in Newsham, Blyth and resident in Newcastle for about 40 years.
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