Ages / Postal Codes / flavors of English

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Susan Fox-Davis wrote:

<< I do happen to know one other HPFGU listee whom I know to be older 
than I am, since she is the elder sister of a former schoolmate of 
mine, but I won't bust her without her say-so. >>

Me. I'm 45 (until November), but that's hardly worth bragging about 
since Artsy Lynda beat me 53 to 45. But how is it possible for *you* 
to be 40-ish?

Btw, up to now I've forgotten to check whether you know that there is 
a HPfGU-California list (such as it is) at 
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HP4GU-California/messages . We're 
making some pathetic efforts to arrange an OoP line party in  ... um 
... Valencia, I think.

Plumski wrote:

<< 15 (fifteen, not one-five) is a district of of London South West. 
Because this is England, there's not a lot of sense to the way the 
numbers are allocated, as W6 was around one corner, SW7 was around 
another and SW14 was the other side of SW6. SW13 was on the other 
side of Thames, and I don't have a clue where SW16 is. :-) These 
numbers (both in London and other large cities) have historical 
connotations, and were in use well before the advent of the modern 
postcode in the sixties. >>

I think we also have that in large USAmerican cities ... at least, 
the middle part of Los Angeles has zip codes that contain the pre-zip 
code "zone" number, like 90033 for what I am told was once LA 33. And 
the numbers are scattered around, like in my old neighborhood, which 
was very densely populated, IIRC there were zip codes like 90004 and 
90005 that represented both sides of the street of one block of an 
east-west street, and then 9004x for blocks between them, and 9006x 
for the north-south blocks... One imagines that the first 30-odd 
"zones" were assigned in a logical sequence, and then they became so 
populous that they were subdivided and only one of the subdivisions 
could keep the old number....

<< BJ at the end identifies a group of houses, usually not more than 
five or  six, sometimes a single one. >>

That's like the "plus-four" on our zip codes. I know my 90291 by 
heart, but have no idea what my 'plus-four' is: 90291-xxxx.

By the way, THANK YOU for this informative and entertaining 
explanation of UK postal codes.

Plumski wrote:

<< Quite possibly the funniest was successful delivery of a letter 
addressed to:
"The little house just past the building with blue window frames near 
the 'Golden Crown' pub, in a Wiltshire village with a charming name I 
can't remember" >>

My friend Lee publishes a fanzine, and one of her subscribers' 
address is his name, "across the street from the Post Office", and 
the zip code (5 digit). Does that count? A widely reported successful 
delivery by U.S.Snail was to:

Hill
John
Mass 

(John Underhill, Andover, Massachusetts) ... that was before zip 
codes.

SPEAKING OF THE INTERNATIONAL DICTIONARY OF ENGLISH,
here is a 2  minute audio about US and UK language:
http://www.theworld.org/content/04248.wma