I have never been more grateful for a sat nav's inability to pronounce Italian place names than when it tried to guide me to "Fick-ARR-ah" somewhere in the wilds of northern Sicily. Three hours after landing at Catania, my hire car and I were locked in a battle of wills on a mountain road that grew narrower with every optimistic kilometre. The mishap came at a T-junction near Sant'Agata di Militello, where I confidently turned left following a brown tourist sign, only to discover twenty minutes later that I had been chasing a cheese festival in a village that definitely was not my holiday let. The cheese, I should note, was excellent. The realisation that I now had no phone signal and a quarter tank of petrol was somewhat less so.

When I finally limped into Ficarra proper, the village sat perched on its ridge like something from a faded postcard, all crumbling baroque and sudden views down to the Tyrrhenian Sea. My property, a solid stone house with a terrace that seemed to hang over the valley, was up a flight of steps that my wheeled suitcase attacked with the enthusiasm of a wounded animal. I was wrestling it onto the second landing when a door opened across the lane and an elderly man emerged, watched me struggle for a theatrical moment, then offered a single word: "Americana?" The accusation stung, though I suspect my rental Fiat and the suitcase's tragicomic performance had given me away. I admitted to being English, which prompted a lengthy sigh and a gesture that somehow conveyed both pity and invitation. This was Domenico, retired olive farmer, widower, and self-appointed village commentator.

He insisted on helping with the case, which meant carrying it himself while I trotted behind feeling simultaneously grateful and emasculated. At the terrace he set it down, surveyed the view with the satisfaction of a man who had made it himself, and announced that the house had "buoni spiriti" but "cattivi rubinetti" - good spirits but bad taps. He was not wrong about either. Within the hour he had returned with a jug of his own wine, which tasted of iron and sunlight and something I could not identify, and a woman he introduced only as "mia cugina, la dottoressa," though her medical credentials remained mysterious. She spoke rapid Sicilian that Domenico periodically interrupted to translate, though his translations bore little resemblance to her words and seemed instead to advance his own opinions on whatever topic he imagined we discussed.

The dottoressa examined my kitchen with the critical eye of a health inspector, pronounced the coffee maker "troppo piccolo per una persona sola" - too small for a person alone - and spent twenty minutes explaining that this was a moral failing on my part, or the owner's, or possibly both. I understood perhaps one word in four but grasped her essential thesis: solitude required proper equipment. She left promising to return with a larger moka pot, which she did, three hours later, with her sister and a cake that involved pistachios and some aggressive layering.

By evening I had met Domenico's nephew, a man called Enzo who drove a van advertising funeral services and who kept steering conversation toward his theories about British television, which he consumed exclusively through dubious streaming services. He believed EastEnders was a documentary and wanted my confirmation that people in London really did say "slag" that frequently. I found myself in the strange position of defending my nation's soap opera realism while Domenico interjected that Enzo had never been north of Palermo and should not be trusted on geographical matters.

The light faded and the terrace became a stage for moths and distant church bells. Domenico produced more wine. The dottoressa's sister, whose name I never caught, sang a song about a sailor that became increasingly bawdy with each verse, though Domenico pretended not to notice. I sat among these accidental hosts, my suitcase still unpacked in the bedroom, my cheese festival detour already becoming anecdote rather than anxiety. The taps, when I eventually tested them, dripped with theatrical inconsistency. The spirits, as promised, were good. I had arrived somewhere, though not precisely where my sat nav intended, and found myself already reluctant to leave.