The day I became a Capetonian

Not My Plate, apart from those first two glorious letters

You may dream of moving to Cape Town. You may even one day get to do that. You do not BECOME a Capetonian, however, until your car has a CA numberplate ... and you actually start to navigate your way around Canal Walk with some degree of certainty.

I'm happy to say that I have finally joined this exclusive club TODAY (for the first half anyway - Canal Walk is still a maze), recorded for posterity as 01 March 2014.

I stood in a queue to register for my new licence disc, with a spiffy CA regstration number. I went across the road and a man made the plates and installed them for me - and my wife photographed me smiling like a goon while the plates were exchanged. I drank a takeaway chocolate milkshake to celebrate. A fellow Cape Town driver let me into the traffic ahead of them, duly impressed with my shiny new number plates. All was (and still is) good with the world.

I've lived in Cape Town for a month already, but now I finally feel part of the city. I went so far as to take a sharp knife and pry the now-useless e-Tag off the windshield, risking life, limb and costly damage. Gauteng? I know you no longer.

PS: I just have to note that the guy who assisted me at the licencing department just shook his head when he discovered I'd moved from Johannesburg to Cape Town, asking me 'Why?' as if I'd drowned 1 000 kittens. It's all yours mate - that specific rainbow leads only to a cracked pot.