I should have known the holiday was going to be characterful when I left my passport in the taxi from Athens airport. There I was, standing on a dusty pavement in Artemida with nothing but a wheelie case and a growing sense of dread, watching my driver's taillights disappear towards Marathonas Avenue. The villa owner, a wiry chap called Spiros who looked about seventy but moved like a man half his age, found this absolutely hilarious. He laughed so hard he had to sit on my suitcase, wheezing and slapping his knee while I stood there wondering if I'd be sleeping on his doorstep.

"First time in Greece?" he asked, though it clearly wasn't a question. "You English, always losing something. My cousin in Manchester loses his keys every Tuesday." He said this with enormous pride, as if his cousin's forgetfulness was a personal achievement.

Spiros phoned the taxi company using a mobile phone with a cracked screen and a ringtone that sounded like a traditional bouzouki being strangled. Within twenty minutes, my passport was back, and I was being shown around the property by a man who narrated everything like a sports commentator. "Here is kitchen, very good, you make coffee, not tea, you are on holiday!" He opened the fridge to reveal a bottle of local wine and some olives his wife had prepared. "Katerina," he said, pointing at nothing in particular. "She thinks all English are hungry. Probably true."

The next morning I met Katerina herself, a formidable woman with dyed red hair and an apron that had seen decades of service. She arrived without warning, carrying a tray of spanakopita still warm from her oven. She spoke almost no English but communicated through a combination of gestures, facial expressions, and what I can only describe as emotional volume. She was deeply unimpressed with my attempt to thank her in Greek. "Ochi, ochi," she said, waving her hands. She then spent ten minutes correcting my pronunciation, her patience wearing thinner with each mangled syllable until she threw up her hands and declared, "You say 'thank you' like a baby. Is fine. You are baby here."

The neighbour, an elderly fisherman called Manolis, appeared on my third day. He spoke to me exclusively in Greek despite knowing I understood none of it, gesturing towards the sea and making what I eventually realised were weather predictions. Spiros translated later: "Manolis says you have face like his nephew who is accountant in Piraeus. This is not compliment, I think." Manolis began leaving me fish on the doorstep, whole sardines glistening in the morning sun, with no explanation. When I tried to pay him, he looked genuinely offended. "He says you insult him," Spiros reported. "Also he says you cook fish like English, which is worse insult."

The local shopkeeper, a young woman called Eleni who had studied in Brighton, became my translator and cultural advisor. She found my interactions with the locals endlessly entertaining. "You smiled at Manolis," she said one afternoon, ringing up my bottled water. "Greek men your grandfather's age, they think you want marriage. Be more sad next time." She said this with complete seriousness, then burst out laughing at my expression.

By the end of the week, I had been adopted, corrected, fed, and thoroughly talked about in a language I couldn't understand. I left my passport on the kitchen table three separate times, each discovered by a different local who delivered it with a lecture I couldn't comprehend but completely deserved. Spiros drove me back to the airport, still chuckling about that first day. "You come back," he said. "Next time, maybe you lose something smaller, eh?" I promised I would, knowing full well I absolutely would not improve.