License Plates - If anybody cared...

For the last week or so, we haven't been able to use one of our cars (which has not been that much of a pain) because we needed to get the license plate renewed - in practical terms, that meant getting a new sticker on the plate. However, becaue we were so late getting it done, we had to get new plates. So this morning I was going to put the new plates on the car. Because the car is an American car, the holes are in the wrong places for the Belgian plates. As I tried to attach things I realized that the old plate which I still had had extra holes drilled in it. Hmmm. I have recently purchased a drill, but it was a used drill, and I've been waiting to go to Carrefour to buy new drill bits, waiting until I had the new plates so the car will be legal, or driving the car will be legal.

Now, I had been driving the car for 6 weeks with the old out of date plates on it - so I wasn't too worried about whether this was illegal or not. But once it was made an issue, I didn't want to drive the car - after all it would be illegal. Hmm. I made some compromises and with one old plate on the front of the car, and one new plate on the back of the car, I drove to Carrefour, and bought a new drill set. In the parking lot of Carrefour, I drilled holes in one plate (portable drill). I started drilling the holes in the other plate, but then I ran out of power in the drill. Urgh. Nasty words. So I drove home with the plates the same as they had been before, only one of the new plates was fully attached in the right spot. None of the Politie cars stopped me, although one appeared in my neighborhood as I was returning, and I thought, well, I can explain this, and point to the plates which I had in the car. Although I am sure it's as illegal as hell to drill holes in the plates in the first place. If anybody cared.