A mere mortal

I’d much rather be lost in Paris than in London, or rather I don’t think I could get lost in Paris like I could in London.  There isn’t, as far as I can see, a single street which isn’t the subject of thorough and proper labelling: a street name at each end, on each side, and at any point where it abuts another.

And I should have been quicker on the uptake.  I’d always found the idea of ‘arrondissements’ a little random and a little cold, but I’ve warmed to them at last.  Or at least now I understand them, and they make perfect sense.  Starting from somewhere just north of the Seine, not far from where I am now, they swirl around Paris with absolute orderliness, in ever increasing circles until the whole of Paris has been covered.

And here’s another thing I didn’t know until recently.  Street numbers round here have an underlying logic, and I don’t just mean the fact they start at one and work upwards.  I mean that they start from the Seine and move outwards from there.  So as I’m a resident of number 6 you’re sure to find me not far from the water’s edge.  Of course not all streets meet the Seine, and, in the case of those that don’t, the numbers flow – like the current – from east to west.

How surprising that someone actually thought all this through, and, even more surprising, then made such a scheme a reality.  Sometimes I feel as if I’m in the hands of a rather thoughtful town-planner in the sky, but I’ve heard that actually a mere nineteenth-century mortal had a lot to do with it.