mercredi 15 décembre 2004

Your Number's Up... Photographing the (in)famous Yesterday's weblog was a humorous comment on odd visual sequences involving a number of my old cars... today's piece is on odd sequences of numbers on cars. Personalised car registration plates are a sign of identity and, for some, wealth... you just have to read the motoring sections of any quality British weekend newspaper to see thousands of examples being offered from as little as £100 to as high as a £100,000 and upwards. Half a dozen from last Saturday's "Weekend Telegraph" include "WHO 2 WOO" for a mere £4,000 after which a frustrated bachelor can perhaps try his luck with "WHO 2 GET" at £5,500 after which his love life becomes expensive with "WHO 2 LET" at £12,000... then there's an unpriced "000 2 BED"; "W1 VES" at £1,800 plus (but how much plus?) for a bigamist-cum-egoist; "1 CUE" for a champion pool or snooker player at £75,000 perhaps... and so the possibilities go on. During my studies at art college in the '60s I took a holiday job at a petrol-filling station. One of the regular clients gave me a book of "cherished" number plates and I was surprised at how many of the cars and their owners described in the book called at the garage for fuel. Amongst those I remember from forty years ago were "BAX 1" which was driven by the sales manager of Baxendales, makers of Baxi solid-fuel stoves; "FAT 1" owned by Hugh Fattorini and affixed to his sleek Aston-Martin into which I pumped around 20 gallons of 4-Star, 10 gallons in each of the twin tanks, most weekday mornings; "FFF xxx" (I won't reveal the full registration number) owned by a sexy woman whom we called "Fiery Fred's F**k" I didn't take any snapshots of those early number-plates I spotted even though they were unusual enough to be noticed and I carried a camera most of the time... I simply didn't see any marketing possibilities in them. However, about twenty years afterwards I learnt that newspapers and magazines were always on the lookout for "filler" pictures of literally anything that turned a head or caused a smile. Whilst tabloid newspapers usually relied on "tit and bum" shots to grab their reader's (usually male) attention, news-stand magazines, either specialist or those whose general content was more for the family, thus provided a steady stream of opportunities (and income) for these curious number-plates... especially if there was a double-entendre to include in the picture's caption. I've chosen six examples from my library stock of interesting number-plates starting with "WOR 5T" seen in Devizes, Wiltshire... the owner of this number was also looking for "BE 5T" so that he could literally show-off the "Worst" and the "Best" on his driveway. I spotted "AE 1" on the Mayor of Bristol's Daimler car... this sold well to photographic magazines because of the obvious connection with the Canon AE-1 SLR camera of the period. The Mayor didn't own one... maybe he was a Nikon or Pentax user! "50 5 EXY" easily became "So Sexy" on a Renault Fuego seen in London after the official spacing between the relevant numbers and letters was slightly changed... actually an illegal alteration but usually tolerated until perhaps the driver commits another minor offence and has the registration tweak taken into consideration at the same time. I had to snap the "super" combination of "500 PUR" on a Range Rover seen somewhere in Wales... I grabbed my camera a shot through my own car's windscreen whilst we were waiting for other traffic to move. Although Americans have enjoyed personalised number plates for a long time and with more relaxed rules a to the improbable combinations of numbers and / or letters... for example the landscape photographer Ansel Adams used "ZONE V" to identify his camera car which was a combination not possible in any other countrie to my knowledge and certainly not in the UK. But the Vermont registration "HAUDI" which was appropriately on an Audi was spotted in the English Cotswolds... the American owners having brought their vehicle over for their long vacation. Now that's style! And so to the last personalised plate with a photographic theme I thought I would include "DEV 1T" which would be very appropriate for a photo darkroom processor and printer. I have no idea who owned the BMW... perhaps a photo-lab owner? I would have liked that number myself being a darkroom worker... the car would have been nice too instead of my clapped-out Morris Minor and Citroen M. 7:13:33 PM    comment []