The sat-nav had been insisting for a good twenty minutes that we were "arriving at destination" whilst we bumped along what I can only describe as a glorified goat track, my partner gripping the door handle with that particular white-knuckled enthusiasm that suggests divorce proceedings may be imminent. "It's rustic," I kept saying, which is holiday code for "I have made a terrible mistake." Then, quite suddenly, the trees parted and there sat Le Tignet, looking impossibly Provencal with its honey-coloured stone and shutters the colour of faded terracotta pots. I may have whooped. My partner may have threatened to whoop me.

The mishap, because there is always a mishap with us, came during the ceremonial unloading of the car. I had packed with the deluded confidence of someone who believes they will actually use three cookbooks, a spice rack, and something called a "citrus zester." In my enthusiasm to demonstrate holiday competence, I grabbed the wrong bag from the boot and promptly deposited an entire week's worth of carefully selected pasta shapes, olive oil, and a wheel of Comte onto the gravel driveway. The Comte, being Comte, survived with dignity. The pasta did not. Orzo everywhere, like tiny rice-shaped confetti announcing our arrival to the neighbours. A very old gentleman watering his tomatoes three gardens down paused to observe this performance. I gave him a cheerful wave. He returned to his tomatoes, presumably grateful for his own life choices.

Le Tignet itself, once we had established which bag contained actual clothing, revealed itself to be the sort of place that makes you immediately hungry. The kitchen, all terracotta tiles and that particular warm light that makes everyone look like they have just returned from a health retreat, opened onto a terrace with a view that could only be described as showing off. Lavender in the middle distance, olive trees closer by, and somewhere below, the faint suggestion of a village with what I desperately hoped would be a decent boulangerie.

We had arrived on market day in nearby Valbonne, though "nearby" proved relative when navigating Provencal one-way systems designed by someone with a grudge against logic. The market itself, when we finally parked in what I am fairly certain was someone's private courtyard, was everything the guidebooks promise and the cynic doubts. Stalls groaning with tomatoes that actually smelled of tomatoes, bunches of herbs tied with rough string, saucissons hanging like edible curtains, and cheeses that announced themselves before you reached the stall. I bought a fougasse the size of a steering wheel, still warm, and ate a corner of it whilst my partner negotiated for goat's cheese with a woman who spoke no English and employed a system of pointing and appreciative noises that transcended language.

That first evening, determined to justify the kitchen's existence and my own packing excesses, I attempted a ratatouille. The aubergines from the market were proper aubergines, the sort with flesh that actually absorbs oil rather than repelling it like a disappointed sponge. I chopped with holiday earnestness, drank rather too much of the local rose, and produced something that was recognisably ratatouille in the same way that a child's drawing is recognisably a house. My partner, diplomatic after three glasses, pronounced it "rustic." I chose to take this as the compliment it was not.

The terrace at Le Tignet became our dining room for the week, breakfast stretching into lunch stretching into the evening aperitif with the relaxed rhythm that Provence imposes upon even the most schedule-obsessed visitor. The old gentleman with the tomatoes, we discovered, was called Henri, and he began leaving small offerings on the low wall between our properties: figs when they ripened, a handful of herbs tied with the same rough string as the market stalls, once a bottle of his own wine with a label handwritten in a script that required dedicated study. I reciprocated with attempts at conversation in French that Henri received with the patience of a man long accustomed to British linguistic butchery.

The local restaurants, when we could tear ourselves from the terrace and my increasingly ambitious cooking attempts, proved a mixed blessing for my ego. A tiny place in the village, perhaps twelve tables and a menu that changed according to what the chef had found that morning, served a daube de boeuf that made my ratatouille efforts seem frankly tragic. I ate it with the particular intensity of someone taking mental notes they know they will never successfully execute. Another evening, a slightly more formal establishment with a terrace overlooking a square where children played football until their mothers called them home, produced a tarte tatin that I still think about with inappropriate frequency.

By week's end, my three cookbooks remained largely unopened, the citrus zester still in its packaging, and I had gained what I can only describe as a Provencal paunch with absolutely no regrets. Le Tignet had become less a place we were staying and more a place we were, temporarily, from: recognised at the boulangerie, nodded to at the market, tolerated by Henri in his garden. The orzo, I should note, never fully disappeared from the gravel; occasional glints of it caught the morning sun throughout our stay, a permanent reminder of our arrival and the particular comedy of holiday competence.