There's a doctor here who, while considered a superb practitioner of his profession, has - to put very kindly - no bedside manner.
The Brits are, in the main, signed up to him because he prides himself on his spoken English. And indeed many of them have reason to be very grateful to him because he has undoubtedly saved lives by his immediate referrals to specialists.
Like all doctors here, it seems, he has no age blindness and strives as hard to save an 80-year-old as he would a teenager, and among the expats there are more of them to save. But basically he is perceived by some as an arrogant, judgmental and rather supercilious man who antagonises as much as he heals.
The second year I was here, I went to him for the first time after an initial meeting to register. I had a stomach ache that wouldn't go away and felt generally hellish. He was in a foul mood as an obviously temporary and totally flustered receptionist kept interrupting him by phone or in person.
With no preamble or examination, he told me angrily I was an accident waiting to happen. Maybe not then, or even in six months, but I was on the autoroute heading into a brick wall. Bam. Finis. Splattered.
"Hello? Have you got me confused with somebody else?" I wanted to ask but I was so stunned I just stared at him. My jaw may even have dropped.
Fair enough - I hadn't put any slap on for my consultation and I only needed to growl "Bonjour" for him to know he was facing a serious smoker, but still a bit harsh, I thought.
Anyway, as I wrote at the time, he sent me for every test imaginable and all came up absolutely fine. Some better than that, actually; much to my own surprise.
With each result I slapped in front of him, he tried to direct me to another specialist and the dance went on in a never-ending polka. Finally, when there was no other bit of me left to examine, I thumped the final scans on his desk and told the receptionist I would prefer to see his partners in future.
In time I discovered I was not alone, mainly among the local French, in distancing myself from him. Most of the British expats continue to see him for the familiar reassurance of discussing their medical problems in their own language, and I totally understand that.
Over the years I heard more anecdotal evidence of his attitude and beliefs about what what's required for good health. I suppose they all make sense, but in the easygoing, fat-engorged and wine-sodden south of France they are not really acceptable. We live by the French paradox and a cold patrician outsider will not persuade us otherwise. (Notice the "we"? I'm with the French on this one.)
This morning though I heard a story about him which both amused and intrigued me. Apparently he made the mistake of telling an English and newly vegetarian wife and mother of grown-up children that in France anyone feeding their child a vegan diet would be guilty of maltreatment and punished. The doctor told her that protein had to come only from animals to make up a good and balanced diet.
It was the woman's husband who told me; an animal rights activist, he was furious.
Could raising your child to be vegan represent a potentially criminal offence? Well, yes and no. As always in France, it's complicated.
Although vegetarianism is not banned, a law was brought in to cover nutritional requirements in schools made it clear that the State believed all protein should come from animals. So there would be no choice and children would be presented with a plate that included an animal product even if known to be vegetarian. They would simply have to eat around it.
At the last estimate only something like 2 per cent of the French population are vegetarian. In the UK, by contrast, it's estimated the figure is as high as 7 per cent. Certainly, in the UK it is relatively easy to be either vegetarian or vegan thanks to the diversity of the country's restaurants. France? Chicken is sometimes as close as it gets as an option (really), or maybe an omelette with a few lardons to liven it up.
The situation is improving in the bigger towns and cities, so I'm told, but out here in the sticks even the nostrils of pigs are up for grabs. There is nothing - nothing - that is not eaten in some form or another.
Living in the heart of the foie gras-producing region of France, I am in some eyes already damned. I turn away from the industrial barns where the birds are mechanically force-fed. I turn too from the sound of the hunters shooting the deer I've seen gracefully crossing my land. But I give my silent assent to all that is happening.
So, in his way, does the doctor. Indeed he promotes it. It is a dichotomy.
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