Numerology

Regular readers will know that I collect car number plates, starting at No.1 and working up and that I have been stuck on No.36 for getting on for a year now.

No luck on our recent trip to Devon. On the way down, we had a No.26, a No.33 and a  No.44 but no No.36. With the two doubles being reasonably common. Then on the way back, I thought I glimpsed a No.37. Irritating as a few minutes later I got a No.36 attached to a small red car in the rear view mirror. Had it been the other way around, I could have scored them both, making a bit of progress.

I continued to peer in the mirror, convinced that I was looking at a No.36. After a while, it fell behind a little and I thought that if I pulled in, I could get the telephone out fast enough to get some conclusive evidence of this elusive bird. At which point it turned out to be an 'E6' rather than a '36'. So the brain had confused a backwards 'E' with a '3', not so unreasonably, but then got itself into a complete muddle, probably aided and abetted by a spot of wishful thinking.

This was then followed by yet more No.33's and No.44's.

All very tiresome. So I was somewhat relieved, having got home, to find that there some other car number plate eccentrics about, as snapped above. Arthur and Karen Arbuthnot? Alcoholics Anonymous seems a bit unlikely. As does NK Elephante of reference 3.

PS: continuing in an arithmetical vein, I was casting my eye over my Paypal account yesterday and noticed a charge for £19.20 for the Way Ahead Group. Who on earth were they? What on earth had they sold me? I ask Bing, and he turns up all the sort of stuff you get from Companies House about companies that have ceased trading. Plus the outfit snapped above, which did not ring any bells at all. However, further digging, including asking gmail what it could remember, revealed that they were actually the ticketing operation which the Tower of London had engaged to handle the ticketing side of its upcoming floral extravaganza. One might think that a Tier 1 visitor attraction like the Tower of London would be able to handle its own ticketing, but clearly the world is more complicated than that. A problem which crops up from time to time on my credit card bill, where the name of the payee can be similarly obscure.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/no35.html. No.35, snagged on the Isle of Wight last July.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/popular-science.html. For Simenon's 'plaques minéralogiques', a now rather quaint French term for number plate.

Reference 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17i3bKKI4M0.