JUST like flowers in the desert after a sprinkling of rain, the cross of St George suddenly blossomed on the rooftop of every other car in the North-East exactly a fortnight ago.

Today, you can't walk down a street without been flapped at, and you can't drive along a motorway without noticing a pile of red-and-white debris by the roadside.

Indeed, one Darlington driver is not content with two flags on his roof and a third on his aerial, so he has had a pair of England shirts fitted to his front seats and has made a large cross of St George to fit across the back.

Of course, this is all about football and very little else. When we see people in their club shirts, we don't immediately wonder whether the red of Middlesbrough signifies that Teesside is finally finding a voice after decades of domination by the black-and-white of Newcastle.

Yet there is an interesting debate about whether this fluttering of flags is, in fact, the dying throes of a small nation drowning in the ocean of the European Union.

Or, more likely, whether it is because devolution for Scotland, Wales and Ireland has reminded the English that they do exist as a separate entity. Our Victorian forefathers swathed themselves in the Union flag because, in their day, England was subsumed into the global business that was the British Empire. Only now, with the Empire history, are the English rediscovering themselves.

St George has been England's patron saint since Richard the Lionheart's crusaders discovered the old boy's bones performing miracles in the Holy Land in the 12th century.

George was probably of Arabic descent, born in Turkey, lived in Palestine, and put to death by the Romans for protesting against the persecution of Christians. He was executed by Emperor Diocletian on April 23, 303, and over the passage of time, Diocletian's name has probably turned into the 'dragon' whom George reputedly slew.

It is ironic, then, that right-wing groups should wrap themselves in the cross of St George as the man himself was of decidedly darkish skin.

He became the patron saint of England after the crusades and shared the honour with St Edward the Confessor and St Edmund, although the people's saint in those days was St Thomas of Canterbury because he conjured up crowd-pleasing miracles on an almost daily basis.

George became the lead saint in 1348 when Edward III dedicated his new chapel at Windsor to him. Today, he is patron of everything from horses to syphilis sufferers, and his flag is used by at least 20 independent nations.

That flag was first used by the English in battle in 1277 when Edward I's army invaded Wales. Until then, the English had marched wearing a white cross on a blue background.

So the cross that now flies from car roofs was our national flag for only a short time because, in 1606 the first Union flag flew under James I. There was hell on: the English were outraged because George's white background had disappeared, and the Scots were dismayed because Andrew's white cross was beneath George's red one.

Pity the Irish, then, when they were drawn into the flag in 1801, because Patrick's flimsy red diagonal cross is well to the back of both.

But this flag dominated for nearly two centuries - even at England football matches until the late 1990s the Union flag was displayed.

Now, as the wheel of history turns, the cross of St George is riding high - although it still feels very unEnglish to display the flag of England.