A real-life flagpole for Christmas

Having painted enough miniature flags for my wargames armies, I’ve always fancied having a real flagpole in the garden.  So I was delighted when my family, despite their misgivings about the ‘nerdiness’ of our home being adorned by such a thing, gave me a proper flagpole as an unusual Christmas present.

The pole was very easy to assemble and set up.  Its sleeve was supposed to go into the ground, but I found a perfect spot to attach it to the fence.  It slips into an old piece of PVC piping, which is held in place by an existing gate-bolt and some twine!  This saved digging any holes or having to concrete in the sleeve.  The lack of a hole added a bonus 16 inches of pole that would otherwise have been buried in the ground.  I just need to replace that temporary garden twine …

I already own a few flags to fly – a couple of New Zealand ensigns of course, but also a Dutch flag (my parents’ birthplace), and an American one (given to me many years ago for some long-forgotten reason).  I’ve also got another flag that was the one I chose to hoist for the pole’s inauguration this afternoon (guess where it is from – it is a place that is very special to me).

I’d eventually like to get more flags to fly on appropriate days.  A British flag is a must, as my wife was born in England.  She also has some Croatian heritage, so there’s another flag to fly (though not very different from the Dutch flag).  I’d like a French tricoleur in honour of a French exchange student who became part of our family for a year.   And then it’ll be just whatever other interesting countries I can obtain flags for.

Besides modern flags, I’d also like some historical ones to fly on appropriate days, such as the United Tribes flag on Waitangi Day (the original New Zealand flag, and in my view a very smart one too).  I already own a replica Napoleonic French standard which could go up to mark the dates of important battles of the Napoleonic Wars.

Below is the view of our house from an adjacent bridle path, in which you can see the flagpole just to the right of the house.  Hopefully some passers-by may enjoy the variety of flags I’ll be flying from now on.