I’ve never been into flags.

National flags I mean.  

The way I see it, they  too often symbolise nationalism of the bad kind. Narrow. ‘My country right or wrong’. That sort of stuff.

Sure, you might have good reasons for wanting to live in a country but it when it moves into something more than that, something emotional, fanatical, that when I sign off….

I’ve never been into flags because I’ve never been into nationalism.  

But today I admit that I’m a flag waver, a person who would be prepared to hang a flag from the small balcony of his third story apartment – except for the fact that the balcony has been netted off to keep the pigeons out.

If it wasn’t for the pigeons, I’d be hanging out a flag alright.

The Ukrainian Flag.

 

What a turnaround!

Until 9 months ago, if you had shown me a Ukrainian flag, I would have had no idea to which country it belonged (even though I’d spent a month in The Ukraine in the autumn of 2018).

I wasn’t alone in my ignorance.

If identifying the Ukrainian flag been a question in a popular quiz show I reckon few contestants would have been able to answer it correctly.

Today everyone in Europe knows that flag.

We’re all Ukrainians now.

Their flag is my flag.

Anti-flag me is now a flag enthusiast.

A flag waver if he got the chance. {Those damn pigeons!)

And the flag of Europe is now the flag of a Europe united like never before.

And that even anti-flag people like me have become flag wavers.