But my overriding emotion was disappointment. Because, unless you are completely misguided, you cannot be ignorant to the fact that these flags – and the recent movement to hoist them everywhere – has its origins in some rather unpleasant far-right rhetoric. The sort that would make even Nigel Farage blush.

You may well love your country - nothing wrong with that, of course - but don’t kid yourself this flag business is simply demonstrating lovely national pride – us all united as a nation and celebrating a common flag. Of course it isn’t.

We do that when there’s a clear reason to do so – football tournaments and major royal events. We’re not adverse to stringing up the patriotic bunting when the mood deserves it. But it’s to celebrate and encourage, to show togetherness, not, as is the inevitable case with these flags, to divide us. Whatever you may convince yourself otherwise.

Ask yourself, perhaps, why they are going up now? Against a backdrop of concerns over immigration, of antisemitism, of Islamophobia. Flags so often used politically in the past by far-right groups. Of a political discourse where those who shout the loudest and bang the drum on divisive issues consistently enough are being allowed to dictate the narrative. Where the truth is twisted and division within our communities sown.

Everyone is now either a ‘lefty’ or a ‘righty’, and there’s nothing for the bulk of folk who hover somewhere in between. There’s a sense we all have to ‘take a side’ - literally, it seems, pinning our colours to a mast. Or a lamppost.

It's all rather Trumpian, isn’t it? And, let’s face it, we really should be better than that.

The reassuring thing – I genuinely believe – is that most of us are. Most of us realise that now is not the time to be fluttering flags to create an ‘us and against them’ narrative. Where ‘them’ is anyone who isn’t white and can’t trace their heritage back to when Kent had its own king. Frankly, who can?

When we blame other people for all our ills, we find ourselves on a road capable of leading us into some very dark places.

But, the best bit? Those flags were pretty much all ripped down within 48 hours.