I was rather fortunate!

More on my registration plate purchase nine days ago. I now think I was lucky to get a half-decent plate (SC10 FAB), and particularly fortunate to pay only £250 for it.

In my usual way, I decided to examine all the possible letter-combinations in case there was something even better than FAB. This involved constructing (you've guessed it!) a big spreadsheet. I started with AAA and worked through to ZZZ. It wasn't such a huge task. The DVLA doesn't permit the use of letters I and Q for ordinary English, Welsh and Scottish plates. And I was confining myself to proper three-letter words, proper abbreviations, or three-letter things one can actually say. So GEE for 'gee' was fine, but not WHZ for 'whizz'. It was a wholesale cut-and-paste operation that took at most three hours.

Having listed all the three-letter combinations allowed in my scheme, I then went through them to select ones worth putting on my next car, bearing in mind that it would be an all-electric car, and startling performance could be taken for granted. So three-letter words like FUN, JET, OOH, OOO, WOW, ZAP and ZZZ (suggesting sizzling electricity, not an afternoon nap) caught my eye.

I also leaned towards a 'female driver' theme, and included HEX (Swedish for 'witch' - very apt if I get another Volvo) and SHE.

The other selections were AMO (Latin for 'I love', so that SC10 AMO - scio amo - would mean 'I know, I love'), FOO, OCH (to go with a plate starting with S, meaning a Scottish car), ONE, TOW (especially suitable when towing the caravan), XXX ('kiss, kiss, kiss'), and XYZ.  My favourites out of all these were HEX and XXX.

The next step was to see whether the DVLA still had any of these plates available.

Disappointingly, most of these plates had already gone. They had either been routinely allocated to new cars registered as SC10-something in the period 1st March 2010 to 31st August 2010, or else, since then, had been purchased as personalised number plates for use on younger SC10 cars. These were the plates no longer available for purchase:

AMO
FOO
FUN
HEX (my number one favourite)
OCH
ONE
OOH
OOO
XXX (my number two favourite)
XYZ
ZZZ

I could however still buy these:

JET for £499 (interestingly, the slightly better SK10 JET also cost £499)
SHE for £399
TOW for £250
WOW for £399
ZAP for £399

All but one costing more than the £250 I paid for FAB. And none as good.

I conclude, then, that I was rather fortunate to secure SC10 FAB, and for only £250. The DLVA's website clearly gets scoured for all kinds of plates, and I'm convinced FAB would have been long gone had I waited until 2025. I'd have been forced to buy something from one of the commercial dealers, probably paying a lot more money. Madness? Well, if your car plays a big role in your life, you will pay to embellish it with a distinctive plate.

In a way, I'm glad. If SC10 HEX had been available for (say) £499, I would have had the bitter experience of wanting something but being unable to buy it. I wouldn't let myself squander so much money on a plate. As it is, I merely shrug my shoulders, because buying it simply wasn't an option and I can't feel disappointed or frustrated.

You'll notice that I haven't been trying to get a plate that links to my name. I might do it, if it were possible to spell out LUCY in one of the registration number schemes used in this country, but it isn't. The nearest I could get would be LCY. I'm not paying to have that.

What about a plate that reflects my initials? I dare say some have speculated that I possess an exotic middle name - Yoko, say - so that SC10 LYM would be a choice for a personalised number plate. But I am just plain 'Lucy Melford', with no middle name, and therefore no middle initial.

A friend has suggested that all is not lost, even with only LM to play with. I could look for a plate that starts with LM - LM10 FAB maybe. But any plate that starts with L is a London plate, and I don't want any association with that city. I have grown to dislike London rather a lot.