L’identité Numérique

January is whizzing along, and we seemed to have relaxed back into our routine. Not that any day is the same, or any week. Probably the most regular thing is getting up in the morning and deciding ‘What shall we do today’.

This morning we had planned to drive into Bar-sur-Seine to buy the wood Brian needs for the staircase, then go to La Poste (the post office) to have our identities checked, then order some chicken from the butchers for some guests arriving later this week and finally go to do some shopping at the Intermarché.

We bought the wood, which proved easier than we thought, as we managed to buy lengths that would fit comfortably into the back of the car. We also bought some hinges, which luckily we’d worked out were ‘G’ for gauche (left) and ‘D’ for droite (right), before we bought them. Unfortunately the butchers was not so successful, it is closed until next week, so we will need to use another one. We then went to the Intermarché, completely forgetting to go to the post office.

‘Blast’ I exclaimed to Brian, ‘we’ve forgotten the post office, and it’s now closed for lunch!’. The reason for the visit is that a lot of the government systems in France all link to a digital identity, through an online system called France Connect. You can verify this via various routes, all of which have stumped us to date - for one reason or another. However we are hopeful that the La Poste route, using our Carte de Sejour and our postal address (which they can obviously verify) will work - croisé les doights (fingers crossed).

Whilst we waited for the post office to open at 13.30, we went for a coffee. The bar was full of lunchtime business, which made me hungry, but I was keen to wait and enjoy our baguette when we got home with some fresh salmon pâté.

The post office visit, could not have been easier. We told the lady we needed to verify our L’identité Numérique and she seemed to know exactly what was needed.

She tapped our details into her handheld device, asked us to verify them, checked our Carte de Sejour, and input our electronic code (that we had generated ourselves on the internet and had then been sent to us via SMS). She then advised us we would get an email in one hour confirming all was complete. Let’s see how it turns out.