My Commemorative Twopenn’orth

Hmm, what trick do I pull from those currently in wide use? Do I make a sarcastic comment about a certain wedding that some of you may have heard about? Do I comment, unselfconsciously and mildly disparagingly, on the media’s wedding fever in a piece that itself discusses the wedding? I’d rather not.

In the royal wedding-related hubbub I occasionally found journalism and encyclopaedic/trivia writing concerned with the correct display of the Union Jack/Flag (delete according to pedantic zeal).

With the appalled vehemence of rogue apostrophe spotters, people often relate the instances when they have found the UK’s flag flown or shown upside down. This will not do - not with all of those impending street parties and house parties. Now, I kept pondering the flag, working it out in my head several times before drawing a version and turning it this way and that. I think it only right to answer this charge with an appropriately smug stickler’s reasoning.

It is impossible to hang the Union Jack/Flag upside down. It will look the same if you turn it around 180 degrees on a flat surface, thus putting the flagpole rope holes (they probably have simpler names than that) to the right.

It is, however, possible to hang it the wrong way round. The flag has a front and a rear. The rear of the flag is a 'reverse print' - if you like - of the front side. Thus when you look at the flags lining the Mall tomorrow they will appear 'wrong' on one side of the road – in fact as you look along the Mall in either direction the flags will be showing their 'wrong side' on the right side. Presumably, with the opaque, stitched examples of the Union Jack/Flag, the poor sods/cows making them have to stitch the flag design in reverse on t'other side. Alternating between the two must give a person brain ache.

Take the Mona Lisa (no, not really; that's been done before). If you were to hang the Mona Lisa upside down.... there - you are imagining that face upside down, aren’t you? Hair at the bottom, chin on top, surmounted by cleavage and then hands. THAT's turning it upside down. If you did that to the Union Jack/Flag the design would still be 'correct.'

When the flag is described as 'upside down' people really mean that it has been flipped over before hanging. If you flipped the Mona Lisa over before hanging it you would be looking at the back - at the frame/wood/canvas/whatever it is. Now you wouldn't call THAT upside down, would you? You'd say it was the wrong way round. It would also fall off the wall.

This all started after I went to my local newsagent. A customer in there commented that the Union Jack bunting they had for sale was upside down. It wasn't. Asides from the argument above it was printed incorrectly, and thus nothing could have been done to get it 'the right way up.'

The newsagent said it was made in Australia.