So I completed my halfway CNPS challenge with 5 days to spare. I am half way through this stupid task. I had remembered passing two 500s parked next to each other outside the Riverside theatre a couple of weeks ago and reasoned that one of them might still be there. I went past it on my run today and they were both still there. Ha ha ha. What a winner I am! Yes. Playing CNPS with such dedication certainly makes me one of life's champions, and not sad, stupid and autistic like you thought.
I have to admit there have been times in the last few days when I've wondered if I've been taking this a bit seriously. Not only have I been noting the location of number plates I need in a little book and adapting my runs so that I will pass the car I want when necessay, I have also spent up to an hour a day walking the streets making notes and finding new plates for future reference.
This isn't entirely due to CNPS. I have found it very good to get out of the house and away from the computer and the internet and have found that whilst I'm walking I tend to start having ideas for work.
That many of the ideas verge on madness is my only slight concern.
I feel like a wandering monk dedicated to the CNPS Gods and it is difficult to escape the notion that the Gods are rewarding or punishing me.
I started wondering whether the CNPS Gods might actually be the same as the Greek and Roman Gods. This would make more sense than them always having existed merely to rule over a brief window in history when people would be able to play this game. They have noticed that no-one was worshipping them any more and have decided to diversify into number plates, possibly until people get back to realising that they are the best gods and start worshipping them in their own right.
This would certainly make sense of why I have felt the need to perform Herculanean tasks and why the first one involved CNPS itself. The Gods are guiding me towards doing this show, probably in the hope that it will popularise them (they maybe should have chosen a different comedian, like Ricky Gervais or Peter Kay).
It has been slightly freaky how many times the right number-plate has appeared before my eyes, just when I've been wondering if I should do the show or not. Even when I've been walking to a street where I'd spotted a 493 before, one will pass me on the way and save me the bother. Every time I got to a number which I had not happened to pre-spot on my travels, it would magically be parked in whatever street I was walking down at the time.
Then when I start reasoning with myself that I it is only coincidence, that I am seeing patterns where there are no patterns and that this is the kind of delusion upon which all religion operates or if I start thinking the Hercules task show idea is a bad one, the number-plates suddenly dry up, or the gods send anagramatic (numergramatic?) plates to punish me. Is that a 497? No it's a 479. Curse you Gods for making me this way!
Even when I haven't been really looking (as if there ever is such a time) the numbers have been falling over themselves to get into my sight. I was coming home last night and was going to get the Hammersmith and Shitty Line train up from Hammersmith, but I just missed oen tube and there was no other waiting on the platform so I decided to walk home. I was looking for a 508 by then, and at the bottom of one road I saw a 509 and 510 parked right next to each other. I cursed my luck, but carried on walking and just as I thought "if the Gods want me to kill the Loch Ness monster they will show me a sign", I saw a 508 parked right next to me.
Obviously I had to go back the four hundred yards to pick up the others. I'd moved on three when had I got to the station thirty seconds earlier I would have missed them.
Then within the space of a minute I had seen two 512s and two 513s and a 514. As I got closer to home I was hoping I wouldn't see a 511 as I didn't fancy walking the streets of West London all night in the dark, but I only saw another 514. It was spooky.
Earlier in a book shop I had found a book called "The Book of Answers", a kind of sophisticated version of that old 8 ball toy that you'd ask a question and then shake to find out the answer.
You have to ask a question and then let the book fall open. I asked it "Shall I do my Hercules show" and it replied, "You'll be glad that you did."
Later in bed, feeling like I had already stepped over the security cordon that defends my mind from insanity, I wasn't sure that the book was right. More worryingly I started actually considering what I would do if one of my baits for the Loch Ness monster succeeded in bringing the beast ashore (I am going to ask some local Loch Ness maidens if they will let me tie them to a tree by the loch, because monsters like this kind of thing and it should get it out in the open. I will get no pleasure from tying a pretty woman to a tree and then standing near her with my sword in my hand. That isn't why I want to do it).
I think it would make me a less doubting advocate of the CNPS church.
The worst thing about this madness is that if I do take on the Hercules idea, then I will have to finish CNPS by the beginning of August. The very worst thing is that there is a part of me that is prepared to give it a go.
Do you think I can get to 550 by the end of March instead?
If the Gods be willing.
