Weight 13st7 (but I think my scales may be playing up - or rather down), CNPS numbers spotted 5.
After swimming today I went to dry my hair. There was one hair dryer that I studiously avoided using. But as I was half way through my hair dry it struck me - the hairy naked man might not always use the same hair dryer. And worse, other short hairy men might use the other hair dryers for worse things than testicle drying.
Maybe I'd just cope with wet hair from now on.
In order to complete CNPS in time I am now moving into new areas of almost militaristic planning to reach my goal. I haven't quite yet got to the point where I have a big map in my office with little cars on it that I can move around with one of those funny pushy sticks. But I'm not far off.
When I began this game in 2002 it was a casual bit of ironic fun. If I was walking around town or a passenger in a car I would occasionally idly play it and be rewarded with a number-plate every other day.
Then on my runs I began to notice where cars I needed were parked and try to memorise the loaction of anything within a five to ten number radius of what I was looking for. Then I started carrying a note-book and jotting down the locations of plates in the next fifty or so. Now I have got to the point where if I have a spare hour I will go out on foot (or occasionally in my car if I have knowledge of a run of cars that I need that are not all that close together)to search for cars and to note the position of any number I haven't yet reached. I have found the most efficient way to log the number-plates is to have a second note pad on which I write the name of the road and then log all the plates that I need and the address which they are parked outside of. If they are parked in a driveway this gives me more reason to believe they will be there another time so I put a D in a box next to those numbers. Then when I get home I transfer all the addresses into another note book which lists the numbers left in order. Then if I happen to be walking down that street again and see a car in the same location as before then I will put a tick by it, which indicates to me that it is likely that this car is always parked in roughly this position and is likely to be here again when I require it.
The care-free days of casual play have gone and in a way I miss those days of amateurism. The spirit of fate and chance has been partially removed and replaced with an efficiency bordering upon ruthlessness.
But I have a job to do and this is the only way forward. In the long run I will be saving myself a lot of pain.
Despite these fastidious preparations I had nothing in any notebook that showed me the whereabouts of either a 656 or a 657, so when I'd run out of steam at 4.30 this afternoon, I went out onto the streets to make more notes and hopefully chance across these two numbers by luck.
After 45 minutes I had many more numbers for my books, but neither of these two had reared their ugly heads. Yet I was getting a small degree of pleasure from both walking and thinking and also from behaving like some kind of mentallist bureaucrat. Isn't this what the world of work is like: writing down meaningless information in an ordered fashion? Purposeful purposelessness?
I felt that I was achieving something by doing nothing. And all along I was satirising the mundanity and pointlessness of existence. Satirising it by being it. It was genius.
Finally I saw a 657, but that was no immediate use. Back up to the High Road and another one was parked (llegally, but I care not for that, for I am also satirising traffic wardens, by noting down numbers but by issuing no tickets). There was a lot of traffic going by. Was it worth waiting here in the hope that a 656 just happened to go by? Or would wishing on a 1000 to 1 chance (diminishing by one for every car that I saw) be the ultimate madness of an increasingly rapid and twisted hurricane of insania?
I decided not to stop, but then reconsidered and wandered back. and within ten cars I received my reward. And as if to prove that the gods were guiding me they also sent a 655 immediately after the 656 (you might think a 658 would be a better reward, but onlyn the wise man would understand why this would be wrong).
If anyone doubts the truth of the CNPS gods then tell them this story and let the mote fall from their eyes - and if they still shout "Nay!" then inform them that earlier as I arrived at the spot where I had once seen a 654, only to find it no longer there and stopping in dismay, cursing my luck, did not a lorry bearing that exact number come trundling past. Coincidence? Only an idiot would think so.
This is my job for the next few weeks. And if things go well and the show is a success and I maybe get to write a book about it all, then I will be being paid for doing it. I will be what I have always dreamt of being, the world's only professional CNPS player.
And can you seriously look at your own job and say that it has any more worth than mine?
Unless you're a fireman or a doctor or a nurse or a teacher or a footballer or a cleaner or a waiter or a cook.... actually, unless you work in the City then pretty much ignore what I just said.
