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The Latest Piece of Lunacy


Gardian
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A couple of weeks ago, the Mairie sent us notice of a public meeting at which we would 'enjoy' the "distribution des plaques de numerotation des habitacions". I was at the Mairie a few days later and asked what it was all about.

"Well, its a requirement from La Poste that all dwellings are clearly identifiable and you'll get a nice new green metal plate with your number on it". Seemed a bit daft to me, because our communal letterbox is 50m away, but OK, I haven't got a number on my gate and if that's what they want to do, then why argue?

I didn't go to the public meeting, but went along to pick mine up this morning. Now where we live is a completely self-contained 'estate' of 11 dwellings, admittedly a bit rambling, but with 3 communal boxes all clearly marked. Virtually never a problem with misdirected post. We are no. 8.

We now have a new address (Impasse de ........) and have been re-numbered as 81 (apparently the number of metres from the nearest junction). Our neighbour is no. 54 !

What's more, the estate of 11 homes has been divvied up into 4 different road names. Apparently we are obliged to tell everybody - utilities etc and even get our carte grise changed!

Complete madness. Has anybody else experienced this nonsense? My instinct is to ignore the whole thing.

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No, not experienced this and no, don't think it's nonsense.

For nearly 7 years, I have wished that we had a "proper" address.  People opposite us are designated "le bourg".  We, OTOH, is allée la fontaine St Pierre.

So, yes, we do have a number and we do have a road name but, guess what, we are not on gps and, apart from la Poste who know exactly where to find us, no other delivery company can find where we are.

Whenever I am able to give a description of where we live such as on a box on the seller's website, I do.  I write detailed instructions on how to find us but they still have to ring to ask.

Recently, I also found that on the lotissement in our village, there is a road very similarly named to ours.

The only place "official" where I have seen our address is on the "deeds" of our house.

Our road is due for some sort of makeover next year, so I hope that they will put up at least one of those titchy little black-and-white signs the name of our road.

You may not think it's important for your house to be known.  But I assure you that when you need an ambulance and you could hear the ambulance's siren circling in your village and you are unable to leave the ill person on their own whilst you run outside to flag the ambulance down, you'd be more than glad to have a number plaque!

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 We had this happen in the mid 90's.

Our little estate had a name, but it was classed as 'Lotissement de XYZ' and then the lieu dit of our village.

Before it was all sorted, volunteers came to each home and asked if we were in agreement with the proposed name for our estate or had a different proposition.

They actually said that they did not want, 'impasse' and neither did we. We were fine with what they suggested and it all went through.

We were not told to change anything in particular with any organisation and didn't and bit by bit over the next number of years, it all got changed.

Was it needed, yes, some old parts of the village, not newish estates like ours, really did need a proper address, so it made it all much much better.

I would have been against them giving us house numbers, we just stuck a plastic label on our post box with our number on. The Mairie put the road signs up, which really was their job. 

And yes gardian, I think that some of the things your Mairie has done is absolutely bonkers and so unhelpful to the postie.

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It has happened in the adjacent commune, where friends have moved from having a very precisely named property (lower meadow) they find that the road has been named and they now live at 1295 rue de .... (and yes it is the number of metres from the junction).

If it comes to our commune, it will be interesting to see how it will turn out. 1 major road, 2 side roads and a host of side ginnels with 2 or at most 3 properties on each. Then about 100 sq kilometres of isolated farms and hameaux.
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Well yes Mint, I can understand your current difficulty, but I'm not sure that this lark (if it comes to you ........ though it probably will) is going to help.

Most deliveries turn up here fine, with the occasional hiccup. When that happens, they ring - no problem. An ambulance had to come here late evening a couple of months ago. No problem - 22 mins instead of 20.

I'm sure that there many properties in the village itself where id'ing is iffy, but why not just do them and leave the rest of us alone? I know - some asshole will complain that he hasn't got a brand new plaque.

Anyway, in our little coin, we're all going to boycott it. Perhaps I ought to rationalise our action by explaining who GB was / is?
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Having instigated the changes you outline, it will be interesting to see if and when the rest of France reflect them.

Think it was about 20 years ago our national code postal was changed. The Huissier we are dealing with has, in their address data base, the old code postal and they are not the only "officials" who still have to catch up.
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Yes we also have 2 code postales, I asked at the Mairie, the old rarely seen one is something to do with our La Poste once being a sorting office and since our mail now comes via the new automated modern one for the local town we have their postcode as do a hundred or so other communes, so from having a postcode that could identify me to within 1300 people, which is crap compared to the UK system of IIRC max 15 houses, we now are lumped in with 250,000 others!

 

Progress French stylie!

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We lived in a small town, once a holiday resort, near Oran, Algeria in the late 1960's.

The houses were numbered before independence, under the French administration.

We were puzzled that the house numbers seemed to have no relationship with one another, and were told that they were numbered in the order in which they had been built.

Given the way things worked there, this seemed as believable as many other things, but we can now consider the possibility that they were numbered in metres from the junctions[I]

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Our commune has one postcode and although there are not that many inhabitants, the houses are well scattered. Our house has two names - one on the deeds and a different one on some utility bills, official documents etc. The only problem is that the 'official' name applies to a few houses scattered around a fairly large farm. All delivery vehicles automatically end up at the farm, despite our careful instructions on how to find us. We even give maps when we make an order, but it makes no difference - everyone ends up at the farm.
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Thibault, are they confusing the 'lieu-dit' and the house name. The former would be on the maps and presumably the sat nav whereas the latter is only very local and would be on any address you have given to utilities.

As these delivery drivers are very often under serious time constraints they may only bother to look at the sat nav and go from there.
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An English friend of ours would use his favourite quote on this "what country are we in?"

We lived in Villemoustaussou for 8 months and our number was 104 rue des Thingys. Next door was 263 (or something like that) next was a lower number. They were all built about the same time and we thought that the new owners were offered a hat with a load of numbers in and you just dipped in for yours? They just seemed totally random [8-)]

But as for yours Gaurdian, it seems like a functionier makeing sure he don't not get bored?

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