IT FLIES every day, come rain, shine, and all the horrible weather we have been having. So no wonder the flag on Bath Abbey was looking tatty, despite several loving repairs. When the chief executive of Bath Tourism Plus, Nick Brooks-Sykes (left), who walks past the abbey on his way to work each day, went so far as to mention it, the abbey authorities decided that they had better get a new one and ask Mr Brooks-Sykes to help raise it.

The responsibility became that of the director of the abbey's Footprint Project, Charles Curnock. Early this month he and Mr Brooks-Sykes performed an unofficial flag-raising ceremony with a bigger and better flag. It bears the arms of the diocese of Bath & Wells in the top left-hand canton of the St George flag. It conforms to the rule laid down in 1938 that the proper flag to be flown on any church within the two provinces of Canterbury and York is the cross of St George, with the arms of the see in the first quarter.