In the course of the car-buying process and getting the RAC in to have a look at the prospective purchase, I've had occasion to practise my radio alphabet quite a lot, since the RAC needed the registration and chassis numbers, everyone needed everyone else's postcode, and as usual nobody could spell my name.

There was one particularly confusing bit where I used the word ‘Peru’ for P, and it was misheard as the digit 2. That struck me as odd, since I thought the whole point of radio alphabets was that they were designed so that sort of mishearing just didn't happen. Of course, the fault turned out to be mine, since the standard NATO radio alphabet uses ‘Papa’ for P. So why could I have sworn it was ‘Peru’?

I've only just worked it out. I bet I was thinking of Peru because the radio-alphabet for L is ‘Lima’. D'oh!