An Unusual Tribute

You might recall me complaining about the amount of union flag detritus littering the Shire in obeisance (carefully chosen word) to the Queen and her Jubilee. Mostly it takes the standard form – whole flags, bunting, flags with pictures of the Queen in the middle, and so on. But today I saw the most unusual one and couldn’t help admitting a modicum of approval.

A woman up the lane had hung a union flag bikini on her gate, positioned approximately in accordance with its normal positioning when functioning in the manner one would expect of a bikini. I considered knocking on the door and asking whether she’d done this to serve the requirements of economy in these troubled times, whether it was an attempt to do something out of the ordinary, or whether it was meant to make some sort of statement (the exact nature of which would be open to conjecture and lead the mostly conservative denizens of the Shire to scratch their heads in bemusement.)

I didn’t, of course, because a gentleman wouldn’t do that sort of thing. I simply walked on wondering whether her acquaintance might be worth making. I’ve only ever spoken to her once and gained the impression that she likes cats, so thank heaven Matthew Hopkins is long gone. The liking of cats was enough to get a woman executed in his day, so imagine what effect the public display of a bikini might have occasioned.