Colm O'Regan: Before 1987 number plates in Ireland were designed to be a mystery 

Colm O'Regan reflects on old number plates this week. Picture: Roger Kenny

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 a ‘do’ brought one particular skill of father’s gently ambling into my thoughts out of the blue.

There was a man giving a speech about his long career and talking about the first van he owned. He referred to it by its number plate. “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?