I so have to get one of these t-shirts! Despite the appalling spelling on the site (which is somehow fitting) the sentiment behind the words is priceless. And they even chose the patriotic Swedish colours of yellow and blue. They are a Canadian company, so I'm surprised at the poor English, so of course, I'll have to give my Canadian friends here a hard time when they try and tell me that they are native English speakers.

I was thinking today that I have no clothing that is "patriotic" stuff - either Swedish nor Australian. I'm meeting some Aussie friends for coffee in Stockholm tomorrow afternoon and one of them quipped that she'll be wearing her Oz t-shirt. Or did I think she ought to save it for the ANZAC Day picnic? And I thought to myself that I had not one item to wear that is vaguely Aussie. I don't want to look completely naff like some of the expats here who turn up in their arkubra, drizabone and RM Williams stuff, looking like a caricature of The Man from Snowy River, even though we all know that back home they never set foot outside the Melbourne CBD and wouldn't have been seen dead in such an outfit. But I would like to own something like this, so I'll have to look around and see what I can find. After all, we like to still fly the flag.

And speaking of flying the flag, my dear friends Ian and Jenny in Adelaide sent us a small, marine quality flag for the boat. If you have superb eyesight or a magnifying glass, you can see that we have a small Aussie flag in the stays - in the top right of the picture.

This poor little flag (also given to us by Ian and Jenny) died last year. The marine environment is tough on flags and we find that we have to replace the main Swedish flag we fly from the aft almost every year. Anyway, the small Australian flag signifies that a crewmember from that particular country is on board.

It has caused some confusion as this particular area of boat flag etiquette is slowly dying. Boats should fly the National Flag of the country where the boat is registered. So we are okay on that score, with our large Swedish flag. This is still a widely followed and understood international custom. Then on the starboard rigging, you can see that we fly the Nynäshamn sailing club burgee and that of the OE Yacht Club of Scandinavia. This is because the starboard rigging is a position of honour (when you visit a foreign port, that's where one would fly the host country's flag).

Now when a crew member or guest on board is of a different nationality from the flag displayed on the aft, it was customary to raise their flag on the port side rigging. But this is rarely done these days. Thus we get endless questions about whether we have either just arrived here from New Zealand (wtf????) or are we going there and already flying the guest flag (a little early wouldn't you say?). And what's with the damn New Zealand bit? As if anyone has ever heard of New Zealand?

Check out these flags? Nothing like each other. What are they thinking?