My wife, my car

When I was a ridiculous young romantic living in a fundamentalist commune 25 years ago I fell in love with a girl, but our relationship was forbidden under the strict courtship rules of the group, which required that before I could be married (no relationship at all unless it is for marriage), I had first to renounce all hopes of marrying, to then be told by the elders, years later, that despite my commitment to singleness, God had layed it on their hearts that I should be married. The Catch 22 for anyone in my situation secretly harbouring hopes of this happening was that the commune believed that God almost never approved such matches! It was in such circumstances that I wrote secret love poems in very bad Latin, because few would be able to understand them if they were found. Idiotically, I sent them to the girl herself, even though I should have known she wouldn't understand the code either, so that I then had to send incriminating translations.

I once got told off by a policeman when I scrawled one of these on a dusty back of a coach. American tourists to Oxford called me cute and took my picture when I translated for them.

This long preamble gives context to this posting, because one line included the hope that "mea uxor eris" (you will be my wife). When I went to the DVLA to point out that my 1958 Prefect had been allocated an 'A' reg in error (1963) when the old registration had been sold on, they acknowledged their mistake and said it would be put right for free. They gave me the next un-allocated period number (taken from a 1950s' London borough list), 886 UXR, which made me chuckle. UXoR means wife. My present girlfriend has always teased that I love my car more than her!