Passing Thoughts: We are being overwhelmed by trivia on wheels

I drive my children to school. Next to the black taxi resembling a giant fish 'n chips with the Evening Standard wrapped round it, there is a van bearing a large pink expanded polystyrene pig, with a policeman's helmet on. The van has signs on all sides saying 'WE ARE NOT GOING TO TAKE ANY MORE STICK FROM THE OLD BILL'. At the other end of the van is a even bigger dinosaur, also wearing a policeman's hat. Is this Dada, or doodoo? The kids look out stony-eyed on these marvels. It's eight in the morning, too early for wonder.

In Brixton we pass huge, absurdist Embassy tobacco advertisements, Viz-inspired hoardings which are designed to address themselves to these 12-year-olds who will have a disposable income in future. That is, the ones who will have learnt to read. This is my children's debut as discriminating consumers. They are being encouraged to associate the concepts of humour, innocent fun and games with heart disease and emphysema. Ooh la la. Irony I see is not now restricted to piles of bricks in the Tate Gallery: you can score any amount you like on the street. The tobacco market can move 'Death' cigarettes so anything is possible.

Ron Reagan may even make a comeback advertising Chesterfields as he did in the thirties, without eyebrows being raised. Lady Thatcher seems to do little other than flog tobacco to the Third World nowadays.

I plan my own anti-smoking campaign, 'We are not going to take any more stick from old Walter Raleigh'. Got that, children? I know these are treasonable thoughts, for a Royal Benediction is upon the goods in question. Benson and Hedges, when I last smoked one, were By Appointment.

Time sometimes puts a touching patina on graffiti. There was once an ancient car in our street. Rust bubbles had dimpled its door sills. It was owned by a TV-spurning, decent and upright family and glued to the car's back window was a dim slogan: 'Pull back - Give my child a chance]' This appeal against the massacre of innocents - yours, if you please, rather than mine - had been glued up to work its magic probably before the children in question were born.

Recently the car-as-message has taken off in new directions, brash, boastful, and aggressive. There are signs obscuring the back windows of cars which cut you up on the M4: 'Show cats being carefully transported', 'Warning - I brake for horses'.

Oh, vile humanity, which brags of braking for horses, but mows everything else down] Vilest of all is 'Baby on Board'. This, whether boast or confession, is generally as true as 'My other car is a Porsche'.

Baby is either at home, or mewling in the au pair's arms while the divorce is thrashed out, the family dog sawn down the middle, etcetera: the urge to celebrate has peaked and the epiphany has passed this way, but no one takes the notice down.

Nietzsche once wrote: 'The hybrid European - a tolerably ugly plebian, all in all, definitely requires a costume.' Yes indeed. What doublet and hose was to Walter Raleigh, what adobe and fingerpaint were to the Almighty when he dreamed up the unforgettable 'Mene Mene Tekel Upharsin' for Daniel, trivial and offensive declarations are to us now. We are all dressed up to the nines in cliche for our friends in the next car.

Prophet that he vas, Nietzsche penned an accurate description even though he had never seen a sticker saying 'Honk If You Had it Last Night'.

Nietzsche's assumption that the vacuous Euro-bounder would always need a logo or a personalised number plate can be measured against the recent pictures of Alan Clark's wife in front of Clark's car.

The seminally indiscreet ex-minister had been recently denounced by his spouse as an S-H-One-T. Alas for all, Clark's choice for personalising his Roller could not be the same, for car registration and the Queen's Speech are the last refuges for printed decency.

But just as the Flying Dutchman forever circles the globe, and Pooh and Christopher Robin are always upon an expedition to visit Wol, somewhere upon the info-bahns of the mind I envision a car with a number plate S-H-One-T, bearing up the erring lord, with a day-glo recommendation on the rear bumper in palpitating, alphabetti-spaghetti type letters to try his 'Bouncy Castle' . . . Ooh, la la.

In the real world, of course, new car number compounds with anything controversial are vetoed. In Uster, this includes K-I-L. I doubt that this will do anything for the traffic accident record of the province, which in the past has been murderous enough to make the total deaths for The Troubles seem dwarfish in comparison.

Our Queen's car registration you may notice when you next see her being taken for a spin, has been so gentrified that it has passed beyond the veil of coarse matter and ceased to exist

outwardly. When the motorcade recedes, there will almost certainly be no challenging rear bumper-sticker injunctions either, such as 'The Bible - God said it and that settles it', for all that Her Majesty's authority comes from an adherence to faith.

No message at all in fact, as the happy crowd disperses - apart from the royal imprimatur you might find endorsing your packet of B&H as you light up a celebratory gasper . . .

(Photograph omitted)