Change of Identity

I needed to change the plates on my car - it was becoming too well known to the Feds! Only joking - I noticed when I washed the car yesterday that the rear number plate was quite badly stained along the top. It looked unsightly and, because I’ve had a personal registration number for many years, I have accumulated a few spare plates . Usually I put my number on retention when changing a car - it just makes life a bit easier and means I end up with a set of plates for the cars original identity, which is useful when I come to move it on. But some dealers are very nice and will throw in a set of plates with my number on so I can change them straight away once DVLA have been advised. And that’s how I end up with the spare ones!
So, just a 5 minute job to change the rear number plate then? Yes if you’re happy for the front and rear plates not to match exactly (the one coming off has a border around the number, the one going on hasn’t) but I am somewhat OCD so had to change both plates to make sure front and rear styles both matched!
Which is where the trouble started. The old fittings disintegrated when I unscrewed them so new ones were required. Only 99p in Halfords but they were slightly different to the old ones and the screws were a different (smaller) size. Which meant drilling new holes otherwise they wouldn’t tighten up.
And that’s how a 5 minute job ended up taking 4 hours, involved a trip across town to Halfords and needed more power tool use than might have been expected for a simple task like this!