CNPS (or, If You Need A Hobby, Don't Do This One)

Many people won't have heard of comedian Richard Herring. Even fewer people will be aware of the tortuous game he learnt about as a child - Consecutive Number Plate Spotting (CNPS). It's a very simple game with very simple rules: The aim is to 'spot' all the numbers of the old style UK car registration plates (1 to 999) in numerical order. Or more concisely, Consecutive Number Plate Spotting.

I won't go into the details (instead I recommend watching Richard Herring's 'Twelve Tasks of Hercules Terrace' for more information and for a bloody good laugh), but as an adult Mr. Herring restarted playing this "game" and eventually completed it nearly two years later. As an adult, he also saw fit to codify some rules about the game which he would follow whilst making his attempt.

Now, I have little to do with Richard Herring - I enjoy his work as a comedian, occasionally read his blog, and follow him on Twitter. But I do have a strong association with car number plates. For as long as I can remember, I have looked at them, played games trying to make words out of the letters, or try to use them as acronyms (I can tell you, it is extremely exciting when I see a reg plate with KF followed by another letter - the variety of Kentucky Fried animals I have thought of being enough to sate the appetite of a King). I've even used reg plates as a way of coming up with character names for a book I've never quite gotten round to writing - possibly because I'm too busy looking at reg plates.

And so, having such an abnormal interest in mundane combinations of letters and numbers, as well as a predisposition towards obsessive, boring, geeky and ultimately very sad behaviour, I decided I would play CNPS. At the very least, I am interested to see if it can even be completed in a reasonably time effective and cost-less way - the newer style reg plates now seemingly outnumbering the older style by 3 to 1 as 10+ year old cars get delivered into the great petrol station in the sky. Great for spotting numbers 2 to 11 or 51 to 61. Crap if you need number 347. Richard Herring himself Tweeted that I would never be able to do it now, and part of me believes him. But I do have a secret weapon: I live in the north.

CNPS bears a similarity to train-spotting. With train-spotting there is a published list of all the numbers of each train, listed by type. When you've spotted all the trains of a type that interests you, you can at least tell all your friends (in the unlikely event that you have any) that you've seen all of them. This is, obviously, pointless. However, I feel that I should point out that CNPS is even more pointless than that. When you finish the CNPS game, all you've actually done is spot 999 random cars in a particular order.

My CNPS playing got off to a very shaky start. I told my wife, Keeley, and my sister-in-law, Stacey, about it, and within a day they were beating me. My wife got to 11 within a couple of days and barely a week in, I last heard that Stacey was upto 21. I was still in need of spotting a number 1. There was clearly something terribly wrong with my game plan.

Then it struck me: in order to play CNPS, you need to leave the house. You can't just sit around on the sofa all day waiting for 999 random cars to come through your living room in a particular order. Unfortunately, I don't work, so I don't have much call to leave the house. Indeed, my job at the moment is applying for jobs, and it is a near full-time occupation of mine.

For the last week, I have found myself concocting spurious reasons to leave the house, and have been seen to dawdle at roundabouts in the hope of catching a fleeting glimpse of a No.1. Fat chance of that around where I live: in the middle of one of the largest council estates in Britain.

As the weekend approached, I knew I had to up my game. To be beaten by two women who are not nearly as obsessive or deeply-disturbed as I am was a shameful thing to live through. This led to me devising a plan. First of all, I decided I would not play CNPS. Job done. Well, not quite. Having heard both Keeley and Stacey get confused about which number they were upto, I felt that I needed some sort of proof of my endeavours.

Thus created did I "XTREME CNPS". Not only do I have to spot the numbers 1 to 999 in order... I have to photograph them as well. But how to prove that I have done this in order? I decided that each time I went out "spotting" I would take one of the day's newspaper with me, write the current number I am looking for on the front cover, then photograph the reg plate with the newspaper. For each successive number photographed in a day, I would add it to the front page.

This has created a nasty side effect to gameplay: unless I learn to be particularly dextrous, I am limited to spotting parked cars on foot. None of this 'driving around and seeing other moving cars' business that Keeley and Stacey laughably believe is a challenging thing to do - especially as they both have to drive around during the day for their jobs. No, I am the one true XTREME CNPS player.

So I found myself this afternoon in Sheffield city centre armed with my game set.

In order to do this hobby you will need today's newspaper, a black marker pen, a bruised banana, a granny smith apple, a flask of weak lemon drink, half a packet of biscuits and some cheap chocolate. I have chosen ASDA cheap chocolate, but other varieties are available.

In order to ensure that I am not cheating (though as I am the only player, cheating would be more pointless than the game itself), I also photographed the unspoiled front cover of the newspaper (an 'i', chosen largely because it was the cheapest newspaper that could be found):

And for additional proof, here is today's date on the newspaper:

And so 'i' and I were ready!

Thankfully, Sheffield city centre boasts several open air car parks where foolish car owners are wont to brazenly leave their cars unattended, their naked reg plates in plain view for all responsible and irresponsible CNPS players to see. It is simply sickening how the minds of the owners of these cars must work, but I was grateful for their indiscretion as within minutes my XTREME CNPS ball was rolling:

The spirit of Simon Quinlank was with me: this No.1 was in view of no other road than Eldon Street. And once you've got No.1 you'd have to be an exceptionally poor player not to find 2 to 11 very quickly in a full car park of easily an acre's size. Thankfully I am not an exceptionally poor player:

There then followed a sight to warm the hearts of all eager CNPS players in their early stages:

Yes, I know, incredible isn't it? 4, 5 and 6 just sitting there. I don't mind the duplication of 4: it was worth it just for the thrill of taking that photograph.

As you would expect, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 followed very quickly:

But now the hard work began: I needed 12. Keeley hadn't seen a 12 all week, and whilst I'd seen one of the cheeky devils a few days before, I did not fool myself into believing that it would reappear if I clicked my fingers as though summoning a whore to my palacial bedroom.

Annoyingly, this car park contained a 13, but not a 12. I found myself in a new and scarier world of walking alone through the wilderness to find a different car park, following the route past the dangerous country of on-street parking.

But then there she was. Placed there by the CNPS deity: the first car you see when approaching the new car park. I nearly fell to the ground and prostated myself before the beauty that was:

Oh such a cheeky flirt she was, she even had the temerity to be sitting opposite an 18, behind a 16 and a stone's throw from a 19: her Siren-like friends taunting me to cheat as they knew I didn't need them yet. I needed 13. I had even seen a 13 already. But would it be still there if I went back?

Yes. And not only that, I passed another 12 lurking in the shadows of an alleyway on the way to be reunited with the beauty of my 12's darker sister.

I couldn't believe my luck. I'd been playing XTREME CNPS for less than an hour and I had already got 13. By now, I even knew where each of 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 and 21 could be unmasked. I felt so sure that I could draw level with Stacey in just a short amount of time.

But oh... What tales of woe I could tell you about my quest for No.14. Wandering aimlessly around parts of a cold lonely city which I had never ventured into before. At my lowest ebb, I convinced myself that sitting next to a set of traffic lights and smoking a fag was the best way to capture the elusive beast of 14. I even entered that most treacherous and despicable of places: NCP. In a way I was thankful that I didn't find 14 in that cavernous hell-hole: I did not want to sully my quest by needing their services.

Oh! The time that passed, though. I felt taunted, tortured even. I saw a 24, 44, 94, 114, 414, and droves of 54s. I stopped to catch my breath outside a building and saw it was No.14 Fitzwilliam Street, sneering at me. And plastered on every shop-front as I trudged along was the echoing laughter of Sheffield's area code, 01 14, teasing my weary soul. Indeed, I felt that the game was over for today. It was around about now that I drank my weak lemon drink.

However, lady luck had one last cruel joke to play on me: I ventured forth and found that my sexy red-coated tease of a 12 had been replaced. It took me a moment to realise that I had indeed succeeded: the number had been irresponsibly disguised, testing me to decipher it:

The victory was hollow. By now, my memorised list of locations for 15 to 22 was wasted: all but 18 had buggered off for the night.

And so must I also. I must rest... The Quest Continues!