I have never been so happy to see a washing machine in my life. Twelve hours after leaving a drizzly Gatwick, I stood in the kitchen of a villa in Isola delle Femmine, Sicily, staring at a puddle of olive oil that used to be inside my suitcase. The lid had come off somewhere between Palermo airport and the front door. Everything I owned smelled like a deli counter. My "clever" idea of bringing a big bottle of the good stuff to save money had backfired spectacularly.

The drive from the airport had been straightforward enough, if you consider navigating Sicilian roundabouts while your sat nav has an existential crisis straightforward. I took a wrong turn somewhere near Torretta and found myself on a road barely wide enough for a Vespa, sandwiched between lemon groves and a very judgmental goat. The goat won that staring contest. I reversed with what I hoped looked like confidence but felt like blind panic.

Isola delle Femmine itself appeared gradually, the sort of place that reveals itself in layers rather than announcing itself with fanfare. First the sea, that impossible blue that makes you suspect someone has tampered with the saturation settings on reality. Then the low buildings, the terracotta roofs, the fishing boats pulled up on shingle. It is not polished for tourists in the way Taormina is polished. It is better for that, though I did not know it yet.

The villa sat back from the main coastal road, up a short slope that my hire car complained about in first gear. A low wall, some spiky plants that I later learned were agave, and a terrace that caught the afternoon sun and held onto it like a miser. I dumped my oily luggage on the terracotta tiles and just stood there, listening. Somewhere a dog barked in that half-hearted Mediterranean way. A scooter puttered past. The sea did its endless shushing thing against rocks.

The mishap with the olive oil forced a pace I had not planned. Instead of collapsing onto a sun lounger with a beer, I spent my first hour rinsing clothes in the villa's washing machine and mopping out my suitcase with kitchen roll. The machine was one of those compact European ones, the sort that sounds like it is preparing for launch during the spin cycle. I sat on the terrace with a warm can of Nastro Azzurro from the corner shop, watching my underwear orbit at twelve hundred revolutions per minute, and felt something shift. The frustration drained out with the suds. There was nowhere to be, nothing to achieve. The goat had already seen me at my worst.

The villa itself revealed its character slowly. A kitchen that someone had actually cooked in, not just styled for photographs. The faint smell of oregano in the cupboards. Bedrooms with shutters that clattered when you opened them, letting in light and the distant sound of fishermen calling to each other down at the harbour. The bathroom had one of those electric showers that requires a small degree of faith in Italian electrics. I respected it from a distance that first evening.

By sunset I had salvaged most of my wardrobe and opened a bottle of local Grillo that cost less than a London coffee. The terrace faced west, and the light came in low and golden, turning the sea metallic. Somewhere below, in the actual town, families were beginning their evening passeggiata. I could hear children, the occasional horn, life continuing in its unhurried way.

I thought about the olive oil, still half-pooled in a plastic bag on the kitchen counter. I thought about the goat, and the roundabout, and the twelve hours of recycled air and airport queues that had delivered me here. The mishap had forced me to stop, to notice the machine's thrum and the particular quality of evening light on whitewash. I had planned to hit the ground running, to tick off beaches and restaurants and sights. Instead I sat with my wine and my damp clothes and my faintly oily hands, and I arrived properly, finally, in a way I might not have managed otherwise.

The washing machine finished its cycle with a triumphant beep. I left the clothes to dry on a rack on the terrace, where they would take on the smell of salt and woodsmoke from someone's nearby barbecue. Tomorrow I would explore properly, find the good coffee, work out which beach had the shadiest spot. Tonight I just watched the last of the light leak out of the sky and felt, for the first time in months, that I was exactly where I needed to be, olive oil and all.