After we had bought the house in Languedoc Sile and I started to agonise about how we were going to convert it into a B&B. We know what we want to achieve but our problem, as always, has been to find the best way to get there.
In fact we were back from France , fresh from our offer on the house having been accepted, and trying to decide how in hell we were going to turn this huge old fashioned presbytery into a functional Chambre d’Hote and still retain its old French character, when we had the almost simultaneous solution;
Maybe Clive would design the conversion for us.
Clive and Sue Nunn have been close friends of ours now for over thirty years, Sue is the anchor woman of KCLR and Clive is a man of many talents. He has been an antique furniture restorer, a cabinet maker, a furniture designer, an interior designer in fact he can turn his eye to anything where his great visual intelligence can be employed.
He designed the original Dwyers Restaurant and then again the complete conversion we did twelve years later.
He has always acted as our eyes when we wanted to buy, change or restore any building and we also have several favourite pieces of furniture which he designed for us. He was always going to be the obvious person for the presbytery but we were almost nervous to ask him because it was a job so far from home.
We needn’t have worried.
Before we even had the deeds signed and before he could touch a piece of the building Sue and himself came with us to Thezan and did a check of La Presbytere.
The fates were on our side, Clive approved, and even better, like the two of us he fell in love with it.
I knew that we had hooked him when he called in the following week and told me that he and I were going to Languedoc in February, with his van full of my furniture, to make a survey of the building, crack into walls to see what they were made of (and what loads they were bearing), check services and decide how best the job should be done.
I felt as if a great burden had been lifted.
Clive not only has a golden eye he also has a great ability to listen, the jobs he has done for us in the past have always sprung from our wants and desires but he has always succeeded in transforming our rough ideas into practical and aesthetically pleasing results.

So on Wednesday 21st March, under our wives sceptical gaze (how could we possibly survive without them!) we headed off to Rosslare, the Renault Traffic bursting with the contents of our attic (including a fridge freezer and my entire collection of antique glass) to catch the ferry to Cherbourg.
Clive was suffering from an eye infection and was complaining of being in some pain. Now as I know, Clive is a product of the English public school system and as such does not admit to ever feeling pain, I was well aware that this pain must be considerable.
He was reassuring, he had just been to a specialist eye doctor who had assured him that is was an infection on some old scar tissue on his eye and that a course of antibiotics would have him as right as rain in a couple of days.
Shortly after we sailed it became obvious that this was not happening, instead of getting better Clive’s eye was becoming more painful.
Still he was convinced by the given diagnosis and after a tempestuous crossing we arrived late in Cherbourg and decided to check into an Ibis for the night and proceed towards Languedoc in the morning.

By the morning Clive realised that he had hit his pain threshold.
He knew that he had to have some medical treatment, and have it fast .
After a quick call to Sile to get the words for scar (cicatrice) and pain (douleur) we got a taxi to the hospital in Cherbourg.
The Urgences (A & E) department in Cherbourg Hospital was incredible.
There was no queue, we were the only people there, within minutes we had been signed through, been seen by a doctor and were been led up to the eye department to see the consultant Ophtalmalogiste.
Although this man was not particularly sympa, he immediately and thoroughly examined Clive’s eye and came up with an immediate diagnosis; Ocular Herpes.
He then gave us a prescription for a cornucopia of drugs and a list of instructions which were beyond my French to understand.
(As my French comprehension is better than Clive’s it was accepted that I should attend all consultations. The medical training of France seems not to contain any element of language training.)

The message was clear, the diagnosis in Ireland was incorrect and the antibiotic treatment useless for his condition.

It was with some hope then that we bought up a chemist shop of drugs, taxied back to the van (in which we had had the foresight to insure me) and started to crack the 800 odd miles to Thezan Les Beziers.

It became evident fairly soon that the drugs from Cherbourg (of which the most important was a Zovirox pomade to be squirted into the eye) were not going to give immediate relief.
It was a sunny day and the poor unfortunate patient spent most of the day, head in hands, obviously in agony.
We managed about 400 miles along the motorway, as far as Saintes, when we decided to stop in a hotel for the night.
The following day, as soon as the sun hit him, Clive became convinced that he needed further help.
What if the second diagnosis was also incorrect?
We made the decision, for better or worse, to head the extra 400 miles to Bezier where I could easily find the hospital and then would have a nearby base in my house in Thezan until the situation would resolve.

There followed another journey from hell.
Clive by this stage was not just in pain he was also ill.
Despite the sun he insisted in having the heater on full blast to warm him.
(This from a man who cut most of a finger off on a band saw and had to be beaten into Kilkenny for treatment)

I had a friend in Beziers who was able to give accurate directions to the hospital so, by lunchtime we were sitting in the Urgences in Beziers hospital.

This was not the wonderful calm area we had seen in Cherbourg.
This was chaotic and bloody like our own dear A & E departments.
However before too long we did manage to see the doctor in charge.
I was under the impression he was taking this a little lightly so I rose to the occasion, drew myself up to my best French and fairly shouted that Monsieur was a man of Grand Courage and was in Incroyable Douleur.

Something seemed to do the trick because we were quickly told that the Ophtalmiste had been summoned from home (it was a Saturday afternoon) and would be with us in an hour.

Within the hour a chic blonde and pretty thirty five year old came for us and gently led us from the horrors of Urgences to the cool modernity of her futuristic consulting rooms.
We both knew instantly that all our troubles were over.
This woman was an angel.

Within seconds she had Clive out of pain, a bed in the hospital organised for him and with a wave of her magic stethoscope had turned two gibbering wrecks into human beings again.
(Her dossier for canonization is already with the Vatican)
She neither agreed or disagreed with the herpes diagnosis, and when Clive began to tell her about his VHI insurances she shrugged as if this was of the most minor importance.
“Here we are in France Monsieur, not the United States”

I wanted to cheer.

I was now off the hook so I headed out to Thezan to unload the van and try and make myself some sort of a nest in this uninhabited empty house.
To its great credit it welcomed me with open arms.
Within an hour I had an empty van (a kindly neighbour had shouted over did I want a Coup de Main)- furthermore as the sun was shining I had ensconced my self on a deck chair on the terrace and was fast finding my way down a bottle of one of my favourite tipples, the local Picpoul de Pinet.
The Angel of Beziers had saved us.

The following day I called to see Clive in hospital.
He was a new man, pain all gone, health restored in a semi private room he was already flirting outrageously with the nurses despite the restrictions of being on two separate drips and dressed in a hospital issued backless paper dress.
The Herpes diagnosis was confirmed, so , in the end, his decision to travel on to France had been vindicated.

By Monday he was out of hospital, with another million drugs, and we were both settled in my beautiful and welcoming house in Thezan.
And within hours Clive had succeeded in turning on the water, a skill that had proved beyond me.

Clive’s immediate concern was that we still accomplish our objective so by Sile’s good graces and skilful use of the internet we postponed our return journey until Sunday and started to work.

The house yielded up its secrets gracefully and the fates, as if to compensate us for our troubled journey down, provided no hidden house terrors.
It is going to convert beautifully.

We actually managed to have a great time for the remaining week.

As we were working hard during the days the nights were certainly for enjoyment.
On Tuesday we were enjoying an excellent meal in La Chamberte in Villeneuve ( where Sile and I had stayed before Christmas) when a beautiful Sri Lankan lady entered, and to my astonishment her husband came over to me with hand extended, it was Richard, one of the auctioneers from whom we had bought the house.
Such moments really make me feel at home in Beziers.
The following morning I went to the chemist to collect some pills for Clive and the Pharmacist amazed me by knowing exactly who I was, what we were doing with the presbytery.
It turned out that he was a great rugby fan and had been at the two matches in Croke Park.
(“ I am so ‘appy you beat England”)

Being the man with the (marginally) better French I also had to do a lot of the organising and was immensely satisfied to crack the French automatic petrol pump, and then even more so to succeed in cutting a swathe through the French bureaucratic system and getting a “permission to dump” card without the necessary permit de sejour.
This also permitted us to dump all of the old nuns’ detritus from the house in the van in the local (and free) Decheterie

We had picked the brains of the excellent Jannis, the wine waiter in La Chamberte, so on Thursday we took an empty van on the road and, having had an incredible hour or two of retail therapy in Ikea in Montpellier (how do they manage to be so cheap!) we went on a wine buying binge.
We filled the van with the superb Viognier of La Madeleine in Marseillan,some of my mothers milk; Picpoul de Pinet, the excellent reds which we had brought home from a previous holiday in Cabrieres and the even more stunning (but way more expensive) Fougeres of La Tour Penedesse.

On Friday we made a serious attempt to have the house clean for Sile as we come across in April- well Clive did, should the truth be known, as he had at this stage began to realise that I was not, like him, a natural cleaner.

On Saturday we belted back on the motorway, this time with Clive rather than me doing most of the driving.
By this stage I had begun to realise that he was not a natural navigator!
(And that after an unintended tour of Centre Ville Bordeaux)

We had an excellent stopover in La Guerche de Bretagne where the Caleche; a restaurant with rooms, provided us with exactly what the Michelin said it would; Genereuse cuisine de terroir and Chambres functionelles.
Sile’s brother and sister in law, Brian and Beth, have a house nearby, close to Dinan, and had Colm , another brother of Sile’s, staying with them there. They gave us a great Sunday lunch of French chickens and far too many French cheeses before we headed back to the boat in Cherbourg.

The crossing was another tempest, I am just grateful that Sile, who is prone to seasickness, wasn’t with us.

Rosslare greeted us with howling winds and lashing rain.

This was enough convince me that I have made the right decision to have at least a toehold in La Belle France.
They certainly do better food, weather and now I have also discovered: medicine.