WORKING for a local free delivery company I study numbers or lack of, usually in he dark. Why is there no numbering of houses or a universal standard which applies, or even a requirement to label as for cars.
Imagine the lot of the delivery driver from Okehampton where new houses and estates with eccentric number are the norm.
Helpful signs like
Nos 1-412 and 43-89 are little use if obscured by parked vehicles, and finding No 6 next to No 31 gives no clue about where No 28 might be, While No 12 adjacent to blank unnumbered, followed by No 16, indicates blank must be No 14, this cannot be guaranteed.
Trying to orientate yourself in a road numbering up to 139 is not helped by finding blank, blank, blank, because the first thing to determine is whether numbers are consecutive, odds and evens on opposite sides, or a mixture of the two; and there's the issue of the house on the corner and which road it likely belongs to — usually determined by respective age.
Having a sign with a witch and black cat doesn't immediately convey the No 13.
Why do people not number their houses? it is a wish for anonymity and to confound delivery drivers, including postmen, and who decides the numbering regime, and who scrutinises it?
I'd like to see councils give more thought to numbering and respective layouts, and if yours is one of the unnumbered houses please be helpful and do something about it.
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