Surviving flames

Found in the mail of a school, is this cover of 23 May 2008 wearing one of the last pictorial cancellations of France?

And an old one... the five-digit postal code "password of your mail" (said the pictorial) was introduced at the beginning of the 1970s in France, hence the educative cancellations.

In Massy, south of Paris region, an old cancelling machine is continuing its decorative job, before certainly to let room to a secretly coded cancelling machine. I hope that, in Massy, the situation will last, whatever the reason.

A detail: it is one of the rare time I can find a 2000s Marianne so out of its center. It reminds me one of the good title in Timbroloisirs (one of the magazine gathered into Timbres magazine): « la frontière mal définie qui sépare les méprisables "très mal centrés" des très respectables "piqués à cheval" » = the ill-defined border between the despicable "very out-centered" form the very respectable "cut in the middle".