The SatNav had other ideas, didn't it? We'd been winding through Abruzzo for the best part of three hours, my other half navigating with the confidence of a man who once found a service station in Belgium, when the voice calmly announced we'd reached our destination. We hadn't. We were in somebody's olive grove, surrounded by trees that looked distinctly unimpressed. A farmer waved. We waved back, reversed with what dignity remained, and eventually found the actual Pineto some twenty minutes later, tucked down a lane where pine trees actually made sense of the name.

Our holiday home sat behind a low wall, all terracotta roof and shuttered windows, with a garden that smelled of rosemary and something else I couldn't place until I opened the door and realised it was the neighbour's lunch. Garlic, definitely. Possibly destiny calling.

I'd promised to cook. This was, in retrospect, ambitious. The kitchen was lovely, all tiled surfaces and a proper gas hob, but my first attempt at the local market in Pineto town ended with me buying what I thought were cooking apples and what turned out to be some variety of quince that even the vendor found amusing. I made a face. She made a face back, then kindly directed me to the actual fruit stall three rows down, where a man called Giuseppe sold me tomatoes still warm from the sun and basil that made my carrier bag smell like a proper restaurant.

Back at the house, I attempted pasta e ceci with the confidence of someone who's watched approximately four cooking programmes. The chickpeas were fine. The pasta was fine. The combination was... educational. We ate it on the terrace with a bottle of Montepulciano d'Abruzzo that cost less than a London pint and tasted like someone had bottled the countryside. My other half said it was "rustic," which I've learned is partner-code for "let's get a pizza tomorrow."

The pizza, naturally, came from a place in Pineto called something unpronounceable that the house manual recommended. Wood-fired, thin in the middle, puffy at the edges, topped with anchovies that actually tasted of the sea rather than a dare. We ate at plastic tables outside, watching families argue affectionately over who'd finished the bread. A man at the next table saw me photographing my food and nodded, as if confirming I'd finally understood something important.

The morning market became our religion. I'd go with empty bags and return with pecorino from the mountains, salami that the butcher sliced so thin you could read through it, and bread from a bakery where the queue moved at Italian speed, which is to say nobody hurried and somehow nobody minded. I attempted arrosticini one evening, those little lamb skewers Abruzzo does so well, on a tiny disposable grill from the supermarket. They cooked too fast, then too slow, then caught fire in a small but exciting way. We ate them slightly blackened with our fingers, drinking beer that had gone warm in the sun, and I decided this was probably the point all along.

There's a trattoria down near the beach, maybe ten minutes walk, where they do fish so fresh it practically introduces itself. We went twice. The owner remembered us the second time, asked about my cooking attempts in a way that suggested the village telegraph was functioning perfectly, and brought us grilled octopus that I still think about when I'm eating sad sandwiches at my desk.

I never did master the quince.