Looking back, two hours later, I think I lost Miriam midway through the EastEnders explanation. It was just as I got to Grant, Phil and Peggy and realised that saying ‘faaaaaamily’ just didn’t work with ‘famile.’

I was chuckling away to myself and bless her, Miriam, was trying hard, nodding at me to continue – but then I glimpsed her eyes.

They had that look of panic we all recognise when faced with either lurking insanity or total incomprehension.

So I stopped and did my usual, verging on hysterical, laugh while saying: "Forget it. It’s hard to explain. I love the differences between us though, don’t you?"

Again I got the nod and nervous smile. But it was obvious I had been, once again, off in my own little Franglais world while she was desperately trying to follow.

Often, it seems, I believe I am having the most extraordinary free flowing, cleverly amusing riffs with my fellow Frenchman/woman when I’m really simply talking merde.

Sometimes wine is involved, sometimes not. Sometimes I just seem to…well, take off and flow. Or rather not.

Like today. It had seemed a simple premise, as so many things often start off in France.

We’d gone to Lavit’s new restaurant for lunch. It’s called Le Vic de Lomagne and already, to those British people who would admit watching it, is known as the Queen Vic.

Well that’s what I call it.

Why, just why, did I try to tell Miriam all that? How do you describe a long-running British soap to a woman who has little interest in anything other than the small corner she inhabits?

Don’t get me wrong; we talk about many things…I think...but we have few if any cross-cultural references.

We’re better when describing ailments and the foibles of others; the cramp in the night; the intransigencies of children; getting bloody older; the horrors of the greater world; the life we once led.

But we have no touchstones of a shared popular culture that can make us laugh with just two words of an old TV catchphrase; no shared reminiscences of school or adolescence; no songs we can join in together. (Not that she drinks, so that’s highly unlikely.)

Yes, of course we’re all sisters under the skin but we’ve been shaped by very, very different experiences and unless one has the fluency of a bilingual poet, one can never join them up.

We can, though, bitch about our fellow diners. Bitching is a wonderful universal language.

On one table is the doctor we detest – arrogance personified in a titfer, as he sanctimoniously pours water after water. I’m facing him so I can give a running commentary of his dominance at the head of his table.

At another; a couple who eat open mouthed, shoveling the food, greedily ignoring each other for what’s on their plate.

Then there’s a man who studies the wine list with the frenzied boy server and orders a bottle.

A Frenchman, ordering a full bottle mid-way through his meal…these days?

"He’s not English?" asks Miriam. "No," I say, for once. "Definitely one of yours. So there."

Even worse, the boy fills up his glass without asking him to taste and buggers off immediately after.

Miriam shudders. "Non?" "Oui," I say, "And he’s just swallowed the whole of the glass without a pause."

Together we do a moue of delightful disgust.

She refuses the chocolate brownie for desert having asked how it is made. She sniffs saying: "I make better at home."

The salad with its two thin slices of sausage, avocado mousse and some strange yellow chunk, she has never seen the like of, but polishes it off. The pigs’ cheeks she pronounces not bad.

There was no choice but for €12 euros, who’s complaining? We decide we would come again but I doubt she will unless I take her.

God knows why and I cannot blame the wine because I only had a couple of glasses, but I tried again with, not only EastEnders but also Coronation Street.

We were by then on the bitter small cups of coffee.

"You come from Nice, right?" I said.

"I do."

"So there must be areas a bit like the east end of London and the terraces of the north of England.’

"In what way?" she asks.

And off I go, like a native. Ten minutes later she shakes her head and says: ‘"No. Not really."

We stare at each other in mutual incomprehension.

The silence for me is painful. Not for Miriam. She stares ahead – her face an Easter Island statue.

I study her as she gazes out of the arched windows. There is no guile there, no deceit. If she hasn’t a clue what I mean – and language really does not come into it – she says so.

If she doesn’t agree with what I’m saying she says so.

If my old life is a strange existence to her she doesn’t say so. She simply shrugs and, if interested enough, asks me the odd question and ponders my answers without envy.

Yet I could phone her tonight and say: "Miriam, I need help."

Sometimes we need only to speak from the heart.