Why Aye

Those "cherished" number plates - we keep spotting them. Not as many, probably, as you'd see around Kensington High Street or other such places where the streets are paved with two-pound coins, but enough for the occasional blog post ;o)

Last week, it was the turn of W1 EYE, which we could only interpret as the famous Geordie greeting "why aye!" We tried various online searches to work out how much a plate like that would be worth, but all of them asked, at least, for a declaration that we owned the plate or had the permission of the owner, and in some cases we would have had to sign up and give them an arm, a leg, and our inside leg measurements before they'd let such sensitive information loose. Tch!

Near as we could tell though, with similar but not *quite* so legible plates going for around the £400 mark, is that it would be worth about five hundred. It wasn't on a particularly stand-out motor. Occasionally we see what must be a very valuable plate on a totally mundane car, which looks quite incongruous.

All of this made me wonder: if you had a budget of £50,000, would you spend it all on a snazzy motor with a regular registration, or would you spend £20,000 on a reasonable car and £30,000 on a really unusual plate? Where would your dividing line be?

Years ago, I registered my interest in a cherished plate that was, at the time, unavailable. As far as I can tell it still is, since they've never contacted me to see if I'm still interested. I quite fancied driving around behind D16 GER, but I wouldn't part with more than a couple of hundred quid for it, and I suspect I'd be in a very long queue if it ever came up.

Malcolm X's brother

Is alive and well and living in the Slough area.

At least that's the conclusion I came to after noticing another personalised plate this morning on my journey to our (extremely salubrious and well-appointed) offices in Slough. Naturally I expect to see more such plates whenever I travel Darn Sarf, as they are so much posher (not to mention richer) than us up here in Flat Cap and Whippet Land, but even so it's still a pleasant experience when I happen across one as well done as RU55 ELX. It adorned a black, sporty-looking number, and was spaced out to spell RUSSEL X. So nice one, Russell.

By contrast I suffered a dearth of personalised plates on the journey home, but my addled brain (I'd spent six hours in a meeting examining the 3,500 option settings for Microsoft Office 2007. It was a wonder I was still awake at all) did spot AR51 LMA, which I interpreted as "ARSEY LLAMA" - entirely appropriate I thought, given llamas' reputation for being, well, arsey.

Not your usual traveller

I thought "travellers" (i.e. gypsies) always drove around in beat-up vans or army surplus jeeps towing ancient caravans. Not so the owner of today's cool number plate: GYP 5Y. This adorned a very modern 4x4 travelling in to the city centre this morning.

Waspy

Driving Blythe home on Sunday we passed a sleek, low sports car with the number plate W44 SPY. I don't think I would've realised this was intended to spell "WASPY" had it not been for the cool paint job. Similar to this classic Dodge EV it was yellow, with a twin black stripe. Waspy, indeed!

Not-so-cool number plates

You know the ones I mean. They look as if they *might* mean something, to somebody, if you could only just work it out. Today's example: B16 NDN. Now I've seen enough private plates to know that B16 is meant to be BIG. But... NDN? Big nuddun? WTF?

Fortunately (in a way) I was behind this vehicle in a queue of traffic, so at one point I came close enough to read the small print under the registration. It said: THE BIG INDIAN.

NDN. INDIAN. Right. Was it worth it?

School run madness

I've commented on this before, but today I saw something that really took the biscuit. Being on the roads during the school run is always a nightmare, but I calm myself with the thought that most of the drivers have probably come from distances too far for their kids to walk, and/or not on handy bus routes. Today's candidate for my road rage didn't have any of those excuses.

The car turned out of a house on Alexandra Road South, drove to the junction with Barlow Moor Road, and then turned in to Whalley Range High School for girls. A distance of no more than 400 metres. A parent with a very lazy child, or a very lazy teacher? I don't know. Either way they shouldn't be on the road (and, interestingly, unless they make the return journey before 9.30am, they won't be subject to any congestion charge if the new scheme goes ahead).

My ire was alleviated somewhat on the return journey by the site of another cool number plate: TO 08 OSY. Spaced out to read TOO BOSY. Now is that supposed to be shorthand for too bossy, or should it really have a well-placed screwhead to turn it into too busy? You decide.

Sorry?

Been a while since I saw any licence plates worth commenting on, and then in the traditional manner of buses, two came along at once.

The first on my visit to Slough this week: V60 RRY. Only it was spaced with the V out on its own and from a distance it read: V SORRY. Wonder what the owner was sorry about?

The second I spotted in the office car park on my way out: M30 HMY, again spaced out - somewhat illegally - as M3 OH MY (me oh my), which although mildly amusing did strike me as a bit pointless (don't they all?), even if it was attached to a BMW M3.

4 x 4 doesn't go

I'm amazed there aren't more accidents on the roads around our house, which become completely choked from 8.15 to 9.15 every day, and again at school chucking-out time.

Parents with more money than sense, often driving massive 4x4 wagons, many with personalised plates (yes, I mean you J1 MMY) driving their beloved progeny the few hundred yards to school because they think they're safer than if they walked or took the bus. The difference in traffic levels during half-term and full-term holidays is quite literally incredible. I know from experience that there's rarely more than 20% of my colleagues that take annual leave at half term. And yet there's easily less than half the number of vehicles on the roads during that week. Which means they're all "school run" vehicles.

I don't know what it is about parents doing the school run. Maybe it's the only driving they ever do. But they don't seem to have any road sense, knowledge of the highway code, or even much common sense. They let their kids fling open the doors without checking if there's anything coming. They walk out from between parked cars. They stop on the zig-zag markings at pedestrian crossings. They perform dangerous U-turns against the flow of traffic. They behave as if their journey was the only important one, and everyone else on the road should get out of their way.

An official, properly organised and ubiquitous school bus service is long overdue for this country, especially in the major cities. It would cut rush-hour traffic massively not to mention improving everyone's temper.

Quiet Christmas Eve

Nikki had to work today, just for the morning, so I dropped her off at 8.20 and returned home to finish the wrapping. Incidentally I spotted another cool number plate on the way home: WH05 NXT (who's next). I wonder what he meant? Something rude I suspect, but the car it was on wasn't that much of a babe magnet lol.

On the plan, this morning was for wrapping Nikki's presents, but I'd managed to get that done lunchtimes on Thursday and Friday. I just had a couple to do for the girls and a rather large and unwieldy present for Annie. That was, until the postman called. With impeccable timing he brought the last of Blythe's presents, which I'd given up on. One more for the wrapping pile, and an increase in the success rate for online shopping. I've done well over 90% of my Christmas shopping online this year, and everything has arrived except one of Nikki's. I'm quite disappointed about that, because it was a "big" present, but it's the only one so I don't think I've done bad, and for this missing one I've printed off a picture so I can wrap that ;o)

While wrapping I took the chance to catch up on some TV we'd recorded that Nikki wasn't bothered about watching, namely: Frankenstein, a 2-hour updated dramatisation that had been on ITV in October. A good idea to try and bring the story into the 21st century - they'd created the monster through stem cell research instead of stitching body parts together - but really I had to admit it was a bit crap. I cleansed my audio-visual palate afterward by watching High Plains Drifter; something else I knew Nikki didn't really want to see.

She called at 12:45 to say they were finishing at 1, so I drove over and picked her up and we settled down for an afternoon of Christmas TV watching - there were more seasonal films and programmes being broadcast than you could shake a stick at, the highlight of which was Patrick Stewart in a TV adaptation of A Christmas Carol. There was a considerable amount of Thornton's troffing as well. How decadent!

A Day in Westminster

Spotted another number plate this morning while I was walking through Westminster: NOT 2B.

It was on a Bentley this time. Very posh. Very Shakespearean. Still, they're all loaded round there. Wouldn't surprise me if he had another one in the garage plated up with "2B", for those days when he wakes up in a more positive frame of mind.

I had this mental image of him finishing his breakfast of lightly poached kippers and wandering out to the lobby to be greeted by the chauffeur:
"2B or NOT 2B today, sir?"
"Ah. That, Jeeves, is the question!"

57 Mini

Saw my first "57" plate today. On a Mini Cooper. Years ago, seeing the first new registration plate of the year was something of an event. In fact I used to "hunt" for them - driving along staring at number plates and even counting how many I saw. That was back in the day when August 1 was the date for the new plate and it only happened once a year.

Nowadays, with two changes of plate per year (March 1 and September 1) somehow it seems more run-of-the-mill. And you can get 5 days into the new registration before you even notice it's around.

Cool number plates

I don't usually rave about "personalised" (aka "treasured") number plates on cars, but just occasionally you see a right good one. I've sometimes dreamed of having one of my own. It would have to be something like D19 GER, or D199 ERS (or substitute 6s for the 9s) but that would almost fall into the category of those awful contrivances that you have to *really* think about before they make any sense, and then you wish you hadn't bothered.

But today on the M60 I saw a classic example of an understated "cool" plate. You often find the wittiest ones on tradesman's cars and vans and this was one of those. Can't remember if it was a plumber or a decorator but the number was N15 JOB. Love it.

My all-time favourite though is one that I pass regularly (it parks kerbside in one of the towns I pass through when I'm picking up or dropping off my daughters). It's SU51 SKA, but it's spaced out abnormally (and, I should add, illegally) with a strategically placed black screw cap, so it looks more like: SUSI'S KA. It is, of course, attached to a Ford Ka. Class.