Irish Examiner 20/03/2023 - Z-cars

There are no manuals to tell you what you will miss about someone. No hierarchy, no weighting system of what you should think of, when and for how long. So I’m not particularly surprised that a throwaway remark in a speech at ‘do’ brought one particular skill of father’s gently ambling into my thoughts out of the blue.

There was man giving a speech about his long career and talking about the first van he owned.  He referred to it by his numberplate. “An AZL I think it was.” And I thought: “Old numberplates!”. A generation and a half think number plates here were simple- Year, County, Number. Like that’s obvious isn’t it?

But there was a time when all was chaos. Mystery. A thousand number plates around the country. Combinations of letters that indicated time and place but there seemed no pattern.

But there were people who knew the pattern. And there are less and less of them now. They could read the runes on the backs and fronts of cars. Skills that die with them before we have a chance to ask them. (ok yes all the number plates are on Wikipedia but still, you don’t get talking to Wikipedia while waiting for the layers mash at the creamery.)

You see, before 1987 number plates in Ireland were … well pretty much designed so that no one would give evidence to the guards. The year was coded into one latter and there was some sort of alphabetical list matching counties to letters, A, B, C etc but there were so many variations between councils and years and it seemed whim. The number plates of Offaly and Laois were still based on them being called Kings County and Queens County. So Offaly came before Laois alphabetically. And there were loads of Zs everywhere. I think this was to give Irish people a chance to say “edZed” or “aZee”. My father was an edZed. He rattled off the edZed-Bees and edZed-Effs like a master. I can remember our TPIs and our ZFs and our Y edZed Ks but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you what year they were exactly. But my father could. He was the Magnum TPI of old number plates. He recalled Morris Minors and Ford Anglias and the like going back to the 50s, by their number plate. It was their name. As if the ed in edZed was short for Edward.

Then 1987 came and the number plates were suddenly simplified. Initials that matched counties. Years that matched ..well … actual years.

Suddenly the sacred knowledge was no longer in the heads of a few. Any moron could remember the reg of someone else’s car.

Now there was some variation in the new number plates at the start but even they were whittled away. Have you noticed the TNs and TSs are gone? Yes, no more riding -north or south- in Tipperary since 2013. No more WDs to differentiate Waterford County Council. Or LKs instead of Ls in Limerick. Completely vanilla.

There’s the odd Estonian knocking around but not in any great numbers. A Northern Reg will send the Neighbourhood Watch WhatsApp into overdrive.  The edZeds are usually on vintage ones. So you give a little beep to a Cortina acknowledge their owner’s quirkiness.

That doesn’t mean that number plates are a big deal. If you see a new car being driven by a fool of a driver, you can say “plenty of money but no sense” and if you see an ezZero Four still gleaming you’ll admire how they looked after the car.

But you won’t need the help of an oul lad to tell you when or where they came from.