I have never been more relieved to see a washing machine in my life, and that includes the time I spilled an entire Negroni down my only decent shirt at a wedding. But I am getting ahead of myself.

The journey to Ostuni began with the sort of optimistic naivety that only a British person planning a driving holiday in Italy can muster. Stansted to Bari, collect the hire car, pop down to Puglia, be sipping something cold on a terrace by teatime. Simple. Except it was not simple at all, was it? It was six hours of increasingly frantic navigation, one toll booth where I accidentally paid for the car behind me out of sheer confusion, and a growing certainty that my sat nav had developed a personal vendetta.

The mishap, when it came, was almost laughably small after all that build-up. I stopped at a petrol station somewhere outside Brindisi, desperate for a loo and a packet of crisps, and managed to lock the car with the keys still inside. The keys, the phone charger, and my last functioning brain cell, apparently. Forty minutes of miming through a language barrier to a very patient attendant, a wire coat hanger, and what I can only describe as a profound moment of self-reflection about my life choices. There I was, a grown man in his forties, trying to break into his own rental car while Italian truck drivers looked on with the polite pity usually reserved for toddlers having tantrums.

By the time I actually reached the property, somewhere on the outskirts of Ostuni, the sun was doing that golden late-afternoon thing that makes everything look like a film set. The trulli-style house sat among olive trees, all whitewashed walls and conical roofs, looking impossibly picturesque and entirely undeserving of my chaotic arrival. I half-expected someone to appear and tell me there had been a terrible mistake.

But no, the key was where it was meant to be, and I stepped inside to the sort of cool stillness that only thick stone walls can provide. The kitchen opened straight onto a terrace with a view I had not earned, rolling hills dotted with more of those strange little conical roofs, everything smelling of warm earth and wild herbs. I stood there in my wrinkled, slightly sweaty clothes, still clutching a petrol station receipt I did not remember taking, and felt something shift. The panic of the journey, the absurdity of the locked car, it all started to loosen its grip.

I made the mistake of sitting down on the terrace furniture, which was a tactical error because I immediately lacked the will to move again. Somewhere in the distance, a dog barked. A gecko did something gecko-ish on the wall. I realised I had not eaten since a sad airport panini approximately nine hours ago, and that the nearest shop was probably a drive away, and that I did not care even slightly.

The washing machine, when I found it in a little utility room, felt like a genuine act of mercy. I could salvage something from this day. I could be a person who has clean clothes and a terrace and a view of olive trees. The fridge contained a welcome bottle of local wine, which I opened with the competence of a man who has just survived a minor ordeal and feels thoroughly entitled to it.

That first evening, I did not explore Ostuni proper. I did not do anything worthy of a travel guide. I sat on that terrace with my wine, watching the light change, occasionally laughing out loud at the sheer ridiculousness of my own journey. The locked car. The coat hanger. The truck drivers. It already felt like a story I would tell, rather than a disaster I had survived.

The house had this way of slowing everything down. No traffic noise, no urgency, just the particular silence of a place that has existed for a very long time and will continue existing long after your small dramas have faded. I found myself noticing things I would usually miss. The way the shadows moved across the terrace tiles. The particular creak of a wooden shutter. The fact that I had absolutely no idea what I was doing tomorrow, and that this felt like freedom rather than failure.

I went to bed early, exhausted in that satisfying way that comes from actual exertion rather than the vague tiredness of ordinary life. The bedroom was simple, white walls, mosquito net doing its best against the evening insects. I fell asleep thinking about very little, which was itself a small miracle.

Waking up there was different. The light came through the shutters in stripes, and for a moment I could not place myself at all. Then memory returned, and with it something else. Anticipation, perhaps. The good kind, without the anxiety that usually accompanies it.

I made terrible coffee in the little kitchen, spilling grounds everywhere, and took it outside to watch the morning reveal itself. The olive trees looked different in that light, more silver somehow. A local cat appeared from nowhere and judged me silently before disappearing again. I had no plan beyond walking into Ostuni later, maybe finding somewhere for lunch, certainly doing nothing in particular with any great urgency.

That was the thing about arriving there, I think. The mishaps and the journey and the locked car had forced me into a state of receptive exhaustion. I was too tired to perform being on holiday, too relieved to have arrived to worry about what arriving should look like. I simply was there, slightly ridiculous, definitely imperfect, entirely present.

I finished my coffee, contemplated the washing machine with genuine affection, and decided that whatever today brought, I would probably manage it. Probably.