Fly The Flag

Walk down any street in this fair land of ours and at some point you'll see an England flag. It'll either be hanging out of the window of a house or fluttering from the side of a car, but one thing's for certain - it'll be the red cross of St. George on a white background.

Over the last 10 years or so, the whole country's gone flag mad whenever a World Cup or European Championships have come around. It's a pleasure to see and even if you take the more cynical view that some people are just trying to outdo each other with the size or number of flags on show, you can't help but wonder at how much more patriotic we are these days.

But I'm pleased to say that of those people in England that aren't actually English, many are proudly showing which country they'll be supporting during this World Cup by displaying a flag of their nation. So far I've spotted a Brazilian flag on a car at the end of the street, a Ghanaian flag hanging from the window of a house nearby, Portuguese and Italian flags flapping away on passing cars, and even an Angolan flag in t-shirt form being worn by a child in my town.

I was hoping to be able to tick off the flags of all the World Cup countries during the five weeks of the competition, but it seems unlikely now as some teams like Togo are hardly like to have much of a high profile over here. Having said that, I did spot someone showing their support for Togo the other day:



Oh alright, so they weren't supporting Togo, but it was damn close...