I expect that it is partly through doing this that we realised what the number plate code was for cars registered on the Island - they all had "DL" as their second and third letters, so the plates would be in the form A123 BDL, or for even older cars, XDL 123Y.
Somehow, number plates became less fun when we got round to the end of the alphabet with plates starting with the age identifying letter. Now we have numbers to signify the age, and they change every six months rather than every year. Don't know exactly why, but I don't approve (maybe it signifies my age in some way!).
I also find number plates in the AB51 CDE format much harder to remember. Perhaps this is because there are more letters to remember in this version. In the old style, it was easy to remember that you had a "G-reg" or whatever the age letter was, and then there was only one more group of letters to remember. Now there are two groups of letters to recall, and as is well known, I do better with letters than numbers (mind you, then again, maybe this also is something to do with my age again!). I can clearly remember the number plate of my first car which I got over twenty years ago (as well as several of Mum and Dad's cars from when I was little), but struggle to remember the registration of the IQ.
One other gripe - it is much harder to make words out of the new format - no more MAG1C when you have to always have seven symbols with two digits in the middle.
Tomorrow marks the tenth anniversary of our new formats. Having started in 2001 with 51 plates, so tomorrow we get onto the 61 plates.
As always, a prize to be awarded for the first sightings - the flashier the car, the better the prize!
Who knows, if I ever get around to ordering one, I might get a 61 plate sometime over the next few months.