Having the good fortune to have inherited, on my mother’s side, a traditional Norman cottage in the commune (smaller than a village) of Notre Dame d’Épine - Our Lady of the Thorne, you may wonder, as we did, why our address is 60 Route de Giverville whilst the next house to our left is No. 5 and the house round the bend to the right is No.143 with no intervening houses on either side!  As mon cousin Jean, would say ‘chose curieuse - a curious thing’, especially as there are not even 60 houses in the commune, yet alone along the road.  

So how can this be?  Our neighbour’s house, across the way on the adjacent route de Bernay, is No. 42 with no houses on either side.  To quote cousin Jean, ‘chose bizarre’! 

The commune and my ancestors had been managing perfectly well without street names and numbers for centuries until one year, 2010 to be precise, une lettre officielle was waiting for us on the doormat.  The envelope, complete with the Normandy coat of arms (two leopards which eventually morphed into the three lions on the England football shirt) was stamped La Mairie de Notre Dame d’Épine. 

For us anglais of the commune, to receive a letter from Monsieur le Maire is just about as ‘chose sérieuse’ as you can get.  But we had always been on intimate terms with Monsieur le Maire.  In fact just the previous summer at Le Quinze Août (15^th August national holiday commemorating the Virgin Mary’s Assumption Day and Notre Dame’s fête day), we had partaken with Lionel in our own entente cordiale consuming at least one too many calvas - glasses of calvados.  So what was with the official correspondence?    

On opening the envelope a No. 60 metallic plate fell out along with instructions which we translated roughly as follows:

Object: Numbering of habitations and naming of roads

Following the installation of road signs we are following up with the numérotation of habitations. 

That is why you are remitted to adjoin your number of habitation rapidly and visibly for a better distribution of post and deliveries.

Please accept, Madame, Monsieur, the expression of my devoted sentiments ..... etc 

Here at Notre Dame we had always prided ourselves on being at the back of beyond, an ideal bolthole from work or, if required, from Police, Mafia or Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue.  Admittedly there had been a troubling development when, a couple of years previous, Ikea had offered to deliver a sofa to the door, adding that we came under Ikea, Paris!  IKEA PARIS!!  But in the end we had the reassuring satisfaction of having to guide the deliveryman, on his mobile, to our gate.  

D'accord - OK, was Monsieur le Maire saying that our days off piste were counted?  But why then the logic defying numerical system?  Surely he wasn’t fighting a subversive rear guard action against creeping centralisation?

Having toyed with this rubric cube like conundrum for long enough, we finally called in at la Mairie for une explication.    

Of course once you know the answer to these things, it’s so obvious, isn’t it? 

Patiently, Lionel explained that with numérotation now being obligatoire and every village and every commune in the area having a church (France was a Catholic country though maybe not so much these days) “every habitation in every rue is numérotated according to how many metres it is from the church spire”!

Though he was not there I heard cousin Jean's voice: "Chose élémentaire mon cher Watson!"