
What’s in an address?
Hello again everyone,
I hope you are all well in a week where the news continues to be dominated by the awful invasion of Ukraine. What a terrible situation, which just seems to get worse each day. I can’t imagine the terror and anger people in Ukraine must be feeling.
Like many countries, France is keen to welcome Ukrainian refugees. The Mairies (town halls) up and down the country are co-ordinating help. Our Mairie has been contacted by the Préfecture in Albi, our departmental administrative centre, to see if anyone could offer accommodation. Given that we have quite a bit of space here, we have put ourselves on the list. This house apparently welcomed refugees in the Second World War, so perhaps can help in some way again.

I mentioned last week that I was going to tell you a little about addresses here in France, especially in rural France! Well this week, perhaps we all need a bit of light relief. So to that end and before I turn to addresses, our 46kg dog Bear has news. He has met a potential new dog friend and now has the possibility of becoming more socialised walking with this dog. He was very good with the dog and owner and almost played! Having spent his first 18 months in a shelter he has no great concept of playing. We have tried to teach him, encourage him, but he shows scant interest most of the time, which is partly a breed thing too. Add lockdowns and general isolation to his breed traits and he has become a teeny bit challenging at times with people, he is so unused to anyone but us! So this is a major step forward.

Anyway back to French addresses – a veritable mishmash of approaches up until now. We have known for a while that our address is to change. Our commune (tiny village) is slowly getting posts up for the new road signs and house numbers and addresses out to people. I have seen a new address for us a couple of times when ordering things online, where clearly commerce has had access to this information faster than us. This was just a road name until recently. Last week I noticed some road numbers: 59, 60 and 1564. Our road has many more houses than I realised! So I decided to visit the Mairie to collect our details, number plaque and that of our neighbour across the way, who weirdly is the only house on her track but has the number 422! I have discovered that actually the 1564 is for a house below us – the only house on the ‘main’ road at the top of our driveway/lane. Why 1564 when it is the only house I wonder? I hoped to find out more.
Many small rural hamlets and communes are known as Lieu-dit x (place called x – x being whatever the name of the hamlet is) with everyone sharing the same address! Luckily the post people are great at getting to know everyone, but it is challenging for delivery people not familiar with the area. Our Lieu-dit is tiny – 2 houses, but there is one nearby with 11 houses, all with the same address.
House numbers were first introduced in France in Paris in the 16th century and again in the 18th century, with little success until a decree by Napoleon in 1805. There is a fascinating article by Geri Walton about this: https://www.geriwalton.com/dwelling-numbers-in-paris-1700-1800s/.
A ruling in 1994 obliged communes of 2000 or more inhabitants to number the houses, but this is now changing. With complications for deliveries and the installation of faster internet for everyone, the country’s 30,000+ smaller villages are having to number houses too. Hence the new number for us. Road names have been decided by officials, often losing the historical sense of a place, which is sad, as appears to be the case for house number 1564. We also have been allocated a road name that bears some relation to the name that the place has had for centuries, but with an addition that is new and has never been used before! I am sure it all makes sense to someone somewhere!
Having collected our number today, we have learnt that the numbers are related to how many metres from the beginning of road you are. We are 60 it appears. Our neighbour is 59, which in itself is odd as their driveway is after ours! We are, however, not going to worry about that! The name of our lane was chosen as it had to differentiate from the name of the road at the end. What slightly took me by surprise was the colour our commune has chosen for the signs. In villages all around us there are lovely new road signs appearing in a very nice dark red and cream; either red lettering on a cream background or cream lettering on a red background. Apparently our council didn’t like this so chose brown! We have a brown background with cream writing – very earthy! It is a bit of a shame as the red and cream ones look rather attractive. Ah well. In the scheme of things not the end of the world – just something to giggle at! We now have the task of affixing our number somewhere visible and letting everyone know we have a change of address!

In other news … we have visited that brocante in Albi again – twice. The first time we bought a couple of light fittings to renovate (paint and tidy up) and a cutesy little wall cupboard which we didn’t need! All a bargain though and the tiny cupboard will look pretty painted with fairylights inside. An amount of imagination is needed for the lights but all will be revealed soon.



Yesterday I had an appointment in Albi, plus we had to visit the shop that supplies Jotul woodburners. Unfortunately the bolt where the handle gets attached to the ash drawer on our woodburner has sheared off – thank goodness it is towards the end of the cold weather, as we now can’t open the ash drawer! As this shop is near the brocante, it seemed rude not to visit, so in we popped again. We spied a couple of bedside tables – really pretty but a bit unloved and with no tops. After much discussion we decided we would buy them and make new tops as the shape and wood finish were just beautiful. They are just what we need for the Nun’s room on the first floor. On arrival to pay, the shop-owner asked if we were buying them, then wandered off. Imagine my surprise when a pair of marble tops appeared on the counter. They are in perfect condition, beautifully rounded at the edges and a lovely colour. Apparently the bedside tables had only just arrived and he had not yet had time to put a label on them to say that the tops were behind the counter. I am so excited about these. With a good clean and some wood treatment, they will look stunning. Our lucky day!



It continues to be chilly at night here, some days are sunny, today grey and drizzly. Yesterday the day started foggy and grey and gradually turned into an amazing sunny and very warm day. The house is still cold so I was wearing multiple thermal layers. Not quite the right attire for 16°C!

The garden continues to wake up. I managed to find some time to get the new blackberry canes in (well new to us) and to spend a brief hour starting to tidy up flower beds. We have some very cold nights forecast for the weekend so pruning is still on stand-by. It needs to be done soon so that we leave the nesting birds in peace from mid-March. The hellebores are really coming into their own now – I was a bit worried they had suffered in the long winter.


On that note I wish you a lovely weekend and week ahead. Look after yourselves in these troubling times.
A bientôt
Ali xx

