My cleaner who can't clean has just left.

A good day. She only smashed one glass, two ashtrays and a Dyson. She's definitely getting better.

In fact she even managed to catch a couple of plates before they added to the pile to be swept up.

A Dyson's no use for picking up crockery; just as well, seeing as it now sullenly refuses to switch on after yet another merciless dragging around the house by Roslyn.

I noticed that she used just the end of a brush to gather up today's haul. I'm not sure how or when she snapped the handle off and actually there is no point in asking.

For even as the dust lies unmoved on the surfaces and gaps remain where my more fragile objets once rested, I will continue to employ her.

Roslyn is more than just a cleaner who can't clean or my "housekeeper" as she proudly refers to her three hours of work a week.

She is my conduit into the intimacies, woes and joys of French village life; vignettes rarely glimpsed by we foreigners, who frankly make little impression or impact on life here.

It's Roslyn, with her weekly report, who helps me grasp the workings of the French mind and see that though there is much that divides us, there is much that unites us. Cliches are only a truth repeated often enough.

I learn that the sweet old farmer, who often hails me on the road for a car-to-car chat, or presses fruit into my hand, is actually a bitter racist. Roslyn's words. He's a staunch National Front supporter who would see all of us, particularly the "rich Anglos", removed from French soil. Overnight.

When I ask whom the new woman is who's moved in with R, she tells me it's his younger brother's wife and that the family has closed ranks against them. Out of honour, the brother has threatened to kill R but everyone knows he's secretly delighted she's fled. R thinks she has money; he's in for a shock.

When R ejected his last lover from the house he was soon into internet dating before looking closer - too close - to home. Apparently the net is now the accepted way for farmers who need a woman to cook, clean and warm their beds. An old- fashioned woman. Now I understand why, when Miriam left Pierrot the last time, he said he'd advertise for another. I thought he was joking.

Through Roslyn, I learn how the state benefits work; hear of the relentless demands of the education system and the increasing defiance of the young; live vicariously her occasional forays to Montauban and nightclubs, and hear how city Frenchmen woo potential overnighters. (Basically, they don't. Depressingly pragmatic to the last, they just ask outright.)

When a tale of local fighting appears in the paper, I can depend on Roslyn to give me the delicious backstory: the feud begun in the last generation over a parcel of land; the youth out to follow in the father's footsteps by sticking a knife into a random victim; the housebreaking blamed on gitanes - gypsies - that everybody knows was a certain gendarme's wayward nephew.

Often Roslyn tells me of her hopes and dreams. Her greatest is to see London. Yet, as with those who dream of France, her London is one seen through a rose-tinted glass.

Her London is one of double-decker red buses; quaint old pubs; Parliament from the embankment and, bizarrely, a London where Carnaby Street is the happening hub and The Beatles command the charts.

It is not her age. She is too young to have yearned for that life unfolding on the other side of the channel, stamping her for ever with the imprint. In fact it's probably a universal view for those who haven't been, as evinced in the fashion for "English" furnishings in the cheaper shops.

Mugs are stamped with the red bus and Londres; the Union flag appears on cushions and bedding, as do Carnaby Street signposts. T-shirts spell out Swinging London on the most unlikely bosoms.

"I want to ride on a bus," she sighs, "and go in a pub and then have tea.

"I think my English will get me through."

Since her English consists of "hello", "goodbye", "I love you" and "have a cup of tea", I'm not as confident as she is. But then again I suppose it cuts to the chase.

Her earnings and a teenage son to support leave little possibility of her buying even a cut-price easyJet ticket to fulfill that dream, so she buys a mug and a cushion instead.

I would love to present her with an all-paid mini-break for her and her boy, but it's an unrealistic prospect these days.

And would I be doing her any favours? Here she can fantasise and plan for the trip "one day". I don't puncture her expectations because it is still possible to find all she seeks.

But not in the tidy frame in which she places it.

So I tread softly and play her some Beatles. At least it masks the sound of smashing.