Regular readers will recall that last November I purchased a personalised number plate for use on Sophie (the car that replaced Fiona) and on all cars to follow. I felt it was worth spending a bit to get something distinctive. I wanted it also to be easy to remember. And if it spelled out something eye-catching or amusing, all the better.
Looking on the DVLA website, I found - much to my delight, and somewhat to my surprise (what, this was still available to buy?) - exactly what I was looking for: OO15 SHE. Distinctive and eye-catching it certainly was, if you had an eye for number plates at all. But, amusingly, the OO part was suggestive of secret agents. And the whole plate could be read as 'Who is she?' - which was bound to raise a smile with most male drivers. (As for the grumpy misogynists, I've yet to have any trouble from them. Perhaps, being high and mighty, they simply let me pass by without a shout or a hoot, thinking me less than the dust beneath their chariot wheels)
Having secured a SHE plate, I was on the lookout for others. But ten months went by without a sighting. And I was driving far and wide around the country.
Ah, I reasoned, such a plate would have to be on a woman's car: male pride would forbid a man from driving any car with a SHE plate on it. Men might like to refer to their cherished conveyances as 'she' - be it a boat, car, plane or (for all I know) space capsule - but slapping a SHE plate on their car - unless it were a vintage machine one hundred and twenty years old, and fondly called Genevieve - would risk public humiliation. And yet, how many women would risk self-identification as a 'woman driver' by sporting a SHE plate on their own voiture? Not many, methinks. Only assertive, sassy women with a point to make. (If, that is, their husbands or boyfriends would let them. Many men still seem to think it's a man's world) So I wasn't, on reflection, surprised not to come across another SHE plate.
Mine couldn't of course be the only such plate in the country; but they must certainly be rare; and quite possibly I might never see another.
But now I have, and in Sussex.
I was driving into Burgess Hill to shop at Waitrose there, when, on a roundabout, I saw SL51 SHE. And surely the woman driving that car saw me. SHE meets SHE at last! She gave no sign, however.
Once home again, I looked up SL51 SHE on the DVLA website. You can do that, primarily to see whether the car concerned (which you might be thinking of buying) is taxed, and when its current MOT expires, and to check various other details. The DVLA website usefully gives the dates of first registration, the last occasion on which the car changed hands, and a description of the car - in this case a black Audi first registered in November 2012, and owned by its present keeper since July 2019.
Now a car first registered in November 2012 would have been allocated a '62' year code, not '51'. So the current keeper must have substituted SL51 SHE for the original registration, presumably with a motive similar to mine. I can't see what the 'SL51' part could mean. It wouldn't have been chosen at random. Perhaps 'SL' are her intials, and '51' her year of birth (i.e. 1951).
For all I know, she has looked my plate up, just as I have hers. The DVLA website doesn't identify who the car belongs to, nor does it provide contact details, at least not from the tax/MOT pages. Still, if she is local, we are bound to encounter each other again at some time.
So Sophie is not alone, not the only car with a SHE plate. That does, it's true, take away that special one-of-a-kind feeling. But at least I am not flying the flag for women drivers entirely on my own!
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