Car Number Plates

The amount of traffic using the B1188 road, that runs through Blankney, connecting Lincoln and Sleaford, is becoming horrendous. It is now pretty much continual throughout the day and most of the evening. How different it was, when as teenagers, we would cycle over to Blankney on a Sunday afternoon. Armed with a pocket full of pennies (old pennies that is, 240 to the pound, some even had Queen Victoria's head on the back) we would first go to the Golf Club and buy half a dozen one penny chews. We would then take up our positions on the school corner and proceed to play a game based on car number plates. The idea was that each person would choose a different number between 0 and 9. When a car came along if the number you chose was on the number plate you received a penny from all the other players. For example, if you had chosen number 4 and the number plate was RDA 446 you would receive two pence from each player but if someone else had chosen 6 you would have to pay them a penny. The point of all this is that in those days a car only came along about every five minutes, if two happened to come along close together that was unusual. On a good day you could make about enough to buy five woodbine cigarettes. Playing the same game today, always assuming you could keep up with the number of cars flashing past, you would probably make enough to buy a mansion.