A new mayor and a light diet

After 12 years of the same team, it feels a bit strange that the incumbent mayor is leaving office after last Sunday's local election. The new mayor won on the first round, whereas a number of others have to toil this entire week to try and get in next Sunday.

Although he won only by a slim majority (86 votes), he got in. Next, we'll see what's going to change.

The first meeting of the new team will take place on Saturday. I feel like going, because it's an event, after all. I have attended only one such meeting in the 20 odd years that I've lived here, that tells a lot about how close, or remote, we can be from our leaders in the suburbs.

That's quite different from what happens in the myriads of small municipalites. In smaller places, there is only one list, gathering together all the components of the political spectrum. Here one reason why we had only one round of votes must have been that there were only two lists, so it was easier to choose. Some cities had four lists to choose from, and few mayors can get elected in the first round when votes are scattered. After all you need to have 50% of the votes plus one to be elected.

I know a couple of people who got elected, teachers and parents of my children's friends. Those parents and I were members of the same parents' association. Old times.

On a totally different note, I am reading a book that was a best-seller in the USA, "French Women Don't Get Fat." It's a good book, full of commonsense tips. The style is brilliant (I'm reading it in French), so I think it must have translated into English to start with. The first leek soup was a disaster. I left too much green and thus got quite uncomfortable for a couple of days. But Mireille is good at lifting your spirits and making you feel that you can do it. I'll see: I've lost a few hundreds of grams but that is no indication whatsoever. Tomorrow I'm having lunch in Paris, and I can be pretty sure that I'll need a leek soup for supper because I can very easily put on a full kilo just eating at a restaurant.