From Paris to PLM

A pictorial cancellation dated 29 November 1945 adviced senders to add the arrondissement number on adresses to Paris, the twenty parts of the city, so that mail can be sorted quickly. French mailboxes usually are divided in two cases: local mail and far away (other départements or foreign destinations).

The datestamp was used at the P.L.M. railway station's post office, understand the gare de Lyon, the starting station of the former network "from Paris to Lyon and to the Mediterranean Sea". A station I love because it has been the first step to my recurring return to the blue sky of my chilhood.

If you walk in this station, remember to see above the sale counters to watch the fresco depicting monuments and landscapes of cities where the PLM tracks were conducting you.

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".

Pray for peace

In these tormented times (but did they really quiet in the end?), let's watch back the hope of the sixties. Not the May 1968 students' movement of Paris, more John Kennedy's and his contemporaries' sixties.

Found on a cover cancelled on 27 November 1967 in Bloomington, Indiana for an arrival in Belgium next December, via Brussels:

The brown stamp was the second one dedicated to the assassinated president. The pictorial "Pray for peace" cancellation is linked to his presidency, both inside and outside the United States.


One book more, harder to retrieve, but which contents lots of texts by these 1960s optimists, all three assassinated: John Kennedy and his brother Robert, and Martin Luther King. German telivision journalist Thilo Koch's Kämpfer für eine neue Welt [Fighters for a new world], 1968 published by C.J. Bucher.


Idealism, when you caught me...

What is my postal code ?

On the 1st January 1968, the départements of Seine and Seine-et-Oise were replaced by seven little départements, including the city-département of Paris, and the Val-de-Marne.


In a little passing of years, it has been a lot to remember and adapt for the inhabitants : introduction of the postal code in 1964, new number for their new département in 1958... A pictorial cancellation helped them remember that Val-de-Marne is 94.

The stamp is the Marianne of Henry Cheffer. This 0,40 franc (new franc, another newelty of 1960) was issed January 1969, two years after a 0,25 and a 0,30 in November 1967. This is the fortieth anniversary of this series that will be commemorated with a booklet next 12th November. A series created in 1954, lost the competition against the Marianne of Muller, and was finally adopted by minister Yves Guéna ten years after Cheffer died.

Algerian post encouraging the use of postal code in 1990

Encouraging to use postal code is now a new label on this blog.

This encouragement is the message of this Algerian post's pictorial cancellation of 1990 : "Postal code : five digits / to sort quickly your mail". The stamp depicts automobile repair jobs.

I imagine that green and red signs of the air mail enveloppe replaced avantageously the usual blue and red, too close to the French flag.

Lattes : how can this town be on a French stamp ?

An unexpected stamp begins the topical collection about the French commune of Lattes. Issued for a Stamp's Day in 1991, this stamp by Patrick Camblin is the second in a series about La Poste's activities : here, the mail sorting.


And, there, scrutinizing the newly bought stamp with my 13-year old eyes, the big surprise : the letter on the stamp has got an another stamp on it and a postal code. It is the 2,50 franc about the Winter Olympic Games of 1992, in Albertville, isued 9 February 1990.

The postal code was the biggest surprise : "34970 LATTES" was the city where I lived at that time !

Why this choice ? Did the artist have a bond with Lattes ? Did the minister of the Industry want to please the mayor ? This is the minister that signed the philatelic program in France.

Let's follow the second hypothesis : the mayor then is Michel Vaillat (UDF member, right aisle) and second-in-succession of Willy Diméglio, member of Parliament from 1986 to 1997. However, between 1988 and 1991, the minister is Roger Fauroux in the leftist government of Michel Rocard. Perhaps, the link I am looking for is with La Poste president : Gérard Delage appointed in 1986 by a rightist government, or his sucessor in 1989 Yves Cousquer ?

Simplier : am I paranoïac ? La Post simply just pick one of the thousands of post code ?

The scan I show you is extract from a First Day Cover stamped in Montpellier, the big city next-to Lattes.

Note of Sunday 16 October 2016:
This article, a little bit rewritten from the version in French, was published this week as the second Monthly Item by the Montpellier Philatelic Association. The major change was that I may have found the link between local politicians and the 1986-1988 Minister of Post and Telecommunication Alain Madelin, a famous liberal* leader of the 1990s like Diméglio and Vaillat.

*: French note: by liberal as in "less State, more private entrepreneurship" and not a conservative.