Bizarre letter signals to councillor her Union flag error

A BEMUSED woman received a “bizarre” anonymous letter complaining that she was flying the Union flag outside her home - upside-down.

The complainant posted the letter simply addressed ‘This house’, with a dated black-and-white photo of her home taken from an old Google Maps Street view picture.

Inside the stamped envelope was another print-out, from the website Project Britain, detailing instructions of how to make sure the Union flag is flying the right way up. It advises: “The broader diagonal white stripe should be at the top on the side of the flag nearest the flagpole.”

Julia Bicker, from Westonzoyland, Somerset, who sits on the village parish council, shared photos of the passive-aggressive letter to the Westonzoylanders Facebook page.

She wrote: “To whoever sent me this... you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to tell me my flag was upside down. You could’ve just knocked on my door.”

Julia, who has been flying the flag outside her home for seven years, said she had “absolutely no idea” that it had been flying upside-down.

She said the mistake most likely happened the last time she took the flag down to clean it, around six months ago.

Julia said: “Part of me now wants to leave it up like that.

“I don’t know if it’s the work of a campaign group or someone who saw it flapping in the wind and felt suitably aggrieved by it.

“But for someone to go to the effort of sticking an out-of-date picture of my house on an envelope and addressing to ‘This house’, is absolutely bizarre and very odd.”

And on Facebook she added that she would have been happy to invite the complainant in for a cup of tea and a chat, had they bothered to knock on her door to address it.

Historically, displaying the flag the wrong way was a sign of distress to warn others of trouble from the enemy.