h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Yep, must be. On the border with Croydon. Lovely place isn't it?!

I have avoided it for years, unless you include the Purley Way when I misguidedly decided to got Ikea!

No, it is lovely, except the Purley Way which is chaos for about 93.5% of the time.

I still tell people I am from London though, because of the blank look you often get when you say Croydon to a foreigner/northerner.

Looks like there is a little h2g2 enclave in south london!

k

Postcodes? I am not a number...

What happens when, like me, you don't have a house number? I share my postcode with (at my reckoning) 7 other houses and flats, but all have names and no number.

Just pray you don't get a new postman!

I used to have to find my way to little pockets of Surrey that have no house numbers. I had to rely on directions like its the house past the fourth birch tree or two doors down from the phone box!

In the days before mobile phones it meant frequent forays into local shops or even knocking on random doors!

Ikea, such memories! I have to go there next week, but I walk cause its only 15/20 minutes for me!

I've had those problems before, Caerwynn... important mail being delivered to my neighbours. Lucky I received some of theirs, or I might never have realised.

And I bet they won't have what you want in stock, so you'll leave with a lamp instead. Just like everybody else does

Parferris, it is worse when you dont have a street name.

I used to live in a village so small the main street wasn't named. So we had 'housename, villagename' as our address.

I had a major argument with the girl at the council when I was trying to get an account for council tax. She insisted that there had to be a street name. I should have just let a sleeping lie, I guess.

Mind you, it was cool when someone addressed a letter to us 'surname, villagename, county' and it got to us.

Fun place, the postie was a morris dancer.

a taxpayer called Ben

I've had problems getting credit because my address was on a list of dodgy properties.

The building had five flats, but our cheapskate landlord made do with a doorbell box with six buttons. So some bright spark came along and started ordering stuff for flat 6. The postie tried to deliver, no reply, so left one of his little cards. Said bright spark could then collect to his hearts content from the main sorting office.

Postcodes don't necessarily stop letters arriving at the wrong house. We had a postman in Leeds who seemed unable to tell the difference between "Wood Lane" and "Grove Lane". Several times.

we used to live at 31 kings cresent and fortunately had friends at 31 kings road so used to swop missed mail.

we used to have the villagename trouble too so we just used to say main street, villagename helped with deliveries to.

there was also the good time a couple of years back living in a big block of flats my mum put down the flat number and the road but not the block number but the postie got it to us, i exclaimed at this and he said it was either you or number something else (might have even been 42)

This question and the answer/s it has received has been archived in the 'Ask h2g2' Archives under the category 'Geography':
http://www.bbc.co.uk/h2g2/guide/A686487#londoncounty

Thankyou to all those who contributed. If you would like to suggest any additions or correct any errors, please leave a message on the relevant forum.

I don't mean to be pedantic but the newly created city and unitary authority that is Brighton & Hove, is still part of East Sussex in a geographic, and ceremonial sense (Lord Lieutenant). Moreover the argument may well be whether or not Brighton is part of Sussex, as the division of Sussex, into East and West was merely administrative, as is the creation of unitary authorities. For further insight I recommend the following website Association of British Counties www.abcounties.co.uk

"Brighton-and-Hove-Actually"?



B

No, the Hove residents haven't got used to adding the "Brighton-and" bit yet.

Bloody snobs

No prizes but can any of you guess where Sndwell is?

or even Sandwell.

The Black Country