Opinion: France's new addresses lack imagination - but they do help

I always loved the fact that you could almost literally disappear off the face of the map in rural France because if you bought a house in a remote enough spot, it wouldn't have an address. No road name, no house number, nothing. You were just 'l'Anglaise' or 'La Famille Dupont' followed by a postcode and the name of a village or hamlet.

Back in the last century this didn't matter because everyone knew everyone, and the only people making deliveries worked for the La Poste so they knew everyone too. 

In fact, if you ever got lost you could stop at a post office and ask for directions. "Ah, you must be delivering her new fridge," the post mistress would say. "She's at home, it's that house round the corner with the ugly shutters."

It meant you could credibly deny receiving certain types of post. It also meant you could drop a line to anyone without knowing their address. You could write 'The Canadians who just arrived, opposite the apple farm, near 30700 Moisson' and know that it would be delivered.

Read more: How to be reimbursed for lost or stolen parcels in France

Delivery drivers getting lost

But with the advent of Amazon and White Van Man, everything changed. 

Smaller post offices closed, newer arrivals kept themselves to themselves, and the countryside filled up with confused delivery drivers sitting in stationary white vans scratching their heads over their GPS. 

Even Google Maps couldn't locate the stone house with blue shutters just after the bush with yellowing leaves.

Various friends with unfindable houses got into the habit of giving my address because I'm right beside the mairie, but even I got a ridiculous number of phone calls from Amazon drivers asking for directions. 

So I guess it is no surprise that the law has been amended. 

Until 2022, only communes with a population of more than 2,000 had to name all their streets, but now all communes have to do "l'adressage" and so maires all over France are scrambling for names for every dead end back road, lane, and alleyway. 

New addresses, old names

It could have been an opportunity to come up with some brilliantly creative street names, but the French being the French – everyone prone to responding 'non, non, et non' to all new ideas on principle – the Hexagon now has thousands more streets called Rue des Vignes, Rue de l'Eglise, Rue de la Mairie, etc. And all houses are numbered, whether they like it or not. We all have proper addresses.

I guess it brings France up to date, and makes it easier for White Van men to deliver all their Amazon parcels without getting lost.

 It's efficient and makes France fit for the 21st century. But it also means that we are all signed, sealed and delivered, on the map in black and white.

Worse, it's going to be impossible to claim that because of having no address, I didn't receive information about local council meetings, recycling tins, and primary school fund-raisers.