Saturday, July 08, 2006

Little things for which I have an irrational loathing. Number 1

...of what I expect will be a very long series. First up, then - personalised number plates. I remember explaining the British number plate system to a German friend, and almost causing him to choke on his beer when I revealed how much people will pay for a particularly apt plate. I suppose if you could get AB 1, assuming your initials were AB, then it might be worth a bob or two, but actually, who cares? Well, quite a lot of people it seems, judging by the lengths people go to in order to have something approximating to a name on their plate.
The worst kind are the ones which have no discernible meaning, but which have to be imaginatively reinterpreted to yield some kind of name. You know the ones - a B can kind of be fashioned by putting a 1 and a 3 close together, or a 5 stands duty for an S. Really desperate ones also use a strategically placed screw with a black cap to sort of make a 1 into an L. I saw one recently where J2NNE was supposed to spell Jenny. How do I know? Because of the most tragic aspect of the enterprise, in which the owner has to put what the plate is supposed to spell in very small letters under the actual registration number.
My all time favourite was one such, although this was not on a personalised plate. No, under a perfectly ordinary plate, someone had seen fit to have added "Jeanina Topping BSc (Hons) QTS". Maybe the car was a graduation present from Mummy and Daddy Topping...

A real pea-souper, and no mistake, guv'nor...

For reasons which are actually mundane, but which I won't reveal in order to maintain an air of spurious mystery, I have to visit Birmingham twice a year. Once again this time, I stayed at Jonathan's, and it is a strange experience. Jonathan's presents itself as a Victorian "experience"- and it is - but far from some country park setting, it is actually located on an unprepossessing roundabout (is there any other kind?) in a rather down at heel suburb.
So it's odd to be resident in a room which might have served as Sherlock Holmes's study - dark maroon wallpaper, mahogony furniture, cushions, knick-knacks and ornaments in abundance - not in Baker Street but in darkest Brum. My room didn't feature correspondence fixed to the mantlepiece with a knife, but did have a bowler-hatted and union jack-waistcoated Teddy Bear. Possibly that belonged to Watson...
Apart from its intense Victoriana, Jonathan's is quirky because of its system of naming rather than numbering rooms. I was in Whiteheath. The labyrinthine interior is navigated by means of coloured lines on the ceiling which correspond to the tube map design on the "passport" they give you when you check in. It is actually quite good fun, but the drawback is the location. For my purposes, it's fine - it's a few minutes' drive from where I need to be - but it seems odd where it is. You expect a Travel Lodge and you get number 221b.