Tim

Tim always wanted his own personalised number plate on his car- T1M DR. He wasn’t a doctor, his full name was Tim David Roberts.

He saw it come up for sale once, £750 it was. His Peugeot 305 wasn’t even worth £600. Even with the trick rallysport alloys.

He considered selling his guitar, a 78 american strat, to fund it but his Dad wouldn’t let him. He even considered selling a kidney, but couldn’t work out how to do it and whilst googling it got distracted by a list of kidney bean recipes.

In the end it was too late, the plate was sold and his dream seemed more out of reach than ever. He sat at home eating wotsits, flicking through the free paper that came through the door on a Thursday, leaving sticky orange finger prints on the corners of the pages.

His eyes fell on an advert for a local solicitors. They were running an offer, reduced rates on legal undertakings. One of their services was name changes by deed poll. Tim had an idea.

For less than the cost of the car stereo Tim had now achieved his dream of a personalised number plate, he’d changed his name to M185 GRN, the same as the plate on his existing car. He said it was pronounced Mibs Gern, his Dad was furious. Even Mibs had a little pang of regret when he realised the costs involved in updating his driving licence and passport.

Still nothing could dim the excitement Mibs felt when he got behind the wheel of the car, that was now most definitely his. He raced down the A38 in the rain to visit his best mate to tell him the news in person. But he lost control on an off camber bend and ploughed the car into a wall, writing it off in the process. Mibs sat on a curb looking at the shards of number plate scattered across the road and wondered if you could transfer a number plate from a write off to a new vehicle, and just how much that would cost.