Harry Grotter

I'm really pissed off that JK Rowling got in there first. I'd written a whole series of books about the apprentice wizard, Harry Grotter, when she happened to publish her first volume. Shite! All mine got rejected on the grounds that I was just some bloke trying to cash in writing some fantasy bollocks for kids, whereas she with her aura of struggling single mum rocking baby in the pram while she writes her books in a café to keep warm and fed on cream teas makes a bastard mint. Makes you sick. I've given up writing fiction and now I do some slaughtering instead and recount it in documentary form.

AA - wAAs geht los?

French bureaucracy: two things to be said about it - it's very bureaucratic and it's very French. The French, like several European states, have until now had a vehicle numberplate system which knocked the UK system into a cocked hat. Rather than underscoring how new my car is or that my husband considers me 5EXY, the French numberplate integrated a final pairing of digits that indicate the French département. This feature is useful in identifying out-of-towners, enabling the casual observer behind the wheel of one's car, in particular, to be wary of the same since they're liable to drive unpredictably due to their unfamiliarity with the local topography.
However, the available numbers inevitably started running out. So what are the alternatives? Let's take the current model, what could be done with it: "123 ABC 75"? 75 is Paris, okay, so what about reversing the order of the sequential numbers and letters: "ABC 123 75"? It must have been considered, and yet this is no doubt where the bureaucrats stepped in. With scant heed to the sociological benefits of the system to date, they surely decided that by making all the digits and letters sequential, and not "wasting" two of them as "place-markers", they would have a system that was almost infinitely expandable - or at least would last until the petrol ran out. So now we have the model "AA 111 AA".
Yet for obvious reasons there was a bit of a backlash about the loss of the department indicator, and so it was decided as an afterthought to include it on the numberplate but not as part of the numberplate, over to the right as a counterpoint if you will to the "F" Euro insignia over to the left. But this is where the "so French" bit comes in: it's only optional (land of freedom of choice); and you can choose which department you want. I ask you! How laissez-faire is that? And what is therefore the bloody point of the exercise? You might live, work and drive all year in Paris but have a fondness in your heart for Corsica and so opt for 2A (south Corsica) or 2B (north) on your number plate. Or state your heart's allegiance to Brittany. Or the Vendée. Or anywhere come to that. Defeats the whole bloody object.
Anyway, about the German in the title. I was quite amused when I saw a tourist coach from Germany parked at the hotel across the way from us, all the way from Aachen. German number plates continue to retain their local identifier, which in this case is at the start of the plate in the form of letters signalling the town of immatriculation. Get the picture yet? "AA". Every new car at the time being driven around France had a plate reading "AA...", since the "AB..." series wasn't out yet. I had this vision of a perplexed coach driver from Germany wondering why so many of his townsfolk were popping up all over the place as he traversed the highways and byways of France.