I have never been so grateful for a sat nav's patience as I was driving the final stretch to our Canino farmhouse. Three hours from Rome, two wrong turns, and one spectacular argument with a roundabout later, I found myself wedged between an olive grove and what I initially thought was a very committed parking bollard. It was, in fact, a small stone wall. The crunch was minimal. The shame was maximal. My partner sat in silence, which somehow felt louder than the crunch itself.

The farmhouse emerged through the cypress trees like something from a half-remembered dream, except the dream hadn't included me reverse-parking into a lemon tree. A woman appeared on the terrace, wiping her hands on an apron that had seen approximately forty years of loyal service. This was Antonella, the owner, and she surveyed my parking attempt with the expression of someone who had witnessed many such arrivals.

"You English," she said, not unkindly. "Always the drama."

Her husband Giovanni materialised from somewhere near a woodpile, carrying an axe with theatrical casualness. He was eighty if he was a day, built like a wine barrel, and spoke in a dialect so thick I caught perhaps one word in five. The one word was always "vino," which felt promising. He examined the lemon tree, pronounced it "more strong than you think," and offered me a fig from his pocket. It was warm. I ate it without question.

Their grandson Marco appeared later, supposedly to help with our bags but primarily to practise his English, which he had learned from American crime dramas. Everything was "no problem" delivered with finger guns. He told me he was "running game" on a girl in Viterbo, which I chose not to translate for my partner. He dropped my suitcase twice, each time with increasing swagger.

The neighbour, Signora Bianchi, wandered over uninvited with a bowl of something purple and stewed. She was ninety-three, dressed entirely in black despite it being June, and spoke exclusively in proverbs that Antonella would then attempt to decode. "She says the goat that stays on the hill does not eat the cabbage of the valley," Antonella offered. I nodded as if this clarified anything. The purple stew was extraordinary. I asked for the recipe. Signora Bianchi laughed for approximately two minutes, patted my cheek with a hand like cured leather, and left without a word.

That evening, Giovanni produced a bottle of his own wine and insisted on teaching me proper cork removal, which involved a pocket knife, several failed attempts, and a final triumphant pop that scattered cork across the terrace. Antonella pretended not to notice. We sat as the swallows began their evening circuits, and Marco attempted to explain cryptocurrency to Giovanni, who responded by refilling everyone's glass and declaring that "the only coin that matters grows on vines."

I found myself telling Antonella about the wall, unprompted, some need for confession overtaking me. She waved it away. "Last month, a German man drove into our well," she said. "You are only medium disaster." This, I realised, was genuine comfort in these parts.

The light faded to that particular Lazio gold, the kind that makes everything look slightly unreal, slightly forgiving. My partner was already laughing about the lemon tree, which would apparently bear fruit for decades regardless. Giovanni had fallen asleep in his chair, wine glass perilously balanced. Marco was texting someone, finger guns at the ready.

I thought about how I had arrived flustered, embarrassed, thoroughly English in my self-consciousness. These people had simply folded me into their evening without ceremony or performance. The wall was already forgotten. The fig had been genuinely excellent. Somewhere, a goat was not eating cabbage, and all was right with the world.