Well, it's like this. Over the past couple of years, roaming the north at longbow shoots, we keep seeing clubs with some kind of banner, flag, or emblem proudly displayed. "Wouldn't it be cool (or even kewl) if we had something like that?" came the thought.

And then one evening while working away on some arrows, I looked up into the rafters and yea, verily there in the dust and shadows did hang the most mighty weapon from the Myffic times of viking re-enactment. My old angon. An angon, for those most of you that don't know, is a celtic or saxon spear, usually used for throwing in the same way as a roman pilum. Our Jarl and weaponsmith made one up as a fighting spear and I took to it at once. Long and light, with metal covering far more of the shaft, far faster than a wood-shafted polearm of its's size, it was a real winner and we fought up and down the Viking renactment trail together (and sneaked onto a couple of mediaeval battlefields where neither of us belonged).

I could never face parting with it after I packed up the renactment lark, and tucked it into corners as the years rolled by. Until it struck me what a great flagstaff it would make...

Here's the plan. Some kind of metal collar to fit over the blade and the top shaft, then lodge on the taper of the socket. This to support a horizontal spar, from which will hang an banner (rather than a flag, so not reliant on wind which, let's face it, we are trying to avoid at shoots!). I have a club logo and some deskjet-printable iron-on transfers, to make up for my lack of embroidery skills. At the south end, the socket from a broken spade kludged into a spike to drive into the ground and hold the thing up.

Hopefully the good stout old ash shaft won't have become brittle after 20 years in the rafters and shatter when hammered into the ground!

Like all plans, this may radically alter as time goes on.