I have never been brilliant with directions, and my first attempt at finding our holiday home in Aznalcazar proved this beyond doubt. Having flown into Seville and collected a hire car that smelled faintly of air freshener and regret, I confidently set off south into the Andalusian countryside with my partner navigating. Within forty minutes we were thoroughly lost among olive groves, arguing about whether that same white farmhouse had appeared twice, and bickering about whether "recalculating" was a tone or a threat. The satnav had given up on us entirely. We eventually found ourselves down a dirt track, confronted by a very unimpressed donkey who, I am convinced, judged us silently before wandering off.

The actual property, when we finally arrived, was almost embarrassingly easy to reach from the main road. There it sat, a proper Spanish cortijo with warm terracotta walls and a private pool glinting in the afternoon light. I laughed at my own uselessness, something I have had plenty of practice at over the years, and decided then that this week would be about embracing incompetence and doing absolutely nothing about it.

The first morning set the pattern for everything that followed. I woke with no alarm, made coffee in the small kitchen with its slightly wonky cupboard doors, and carried it outside to the terrace. The sun was already doing its proper Andalusian thing, that particular brightness that makes everything look slightly overexposed. I had brought three books and finished none of them, which felt like the correct approach. Reading a paragraph, dozing, reading another, watching a gecko on the wall. This became my routine.

The pool was the centre of our world. Not swimming laps or anything energetic, just floating and occasional lazy paddles to the shade of the umbrella. My partner developed a minor obsession with keeping the pool skimmer clean, which I found hilarious given his usual avoidance of household tasks. We invented a game called "how long can you lie completely still," which I always lost because some insect would land on me or I would need another drink.

Aznalcazar itself is a small town, unhurried and straightforward. We walked there most evenings when the heat had softened into something bearable. The streets are narrow, the buildings painted in those faded colours that only seem to exist in southern Spain. We found a couple of bars where the beer came cold and cheap, and where the locals tolerated our dreadful Spanish with good humour. One evening we attempted to order tapas and ended up with far more food than intended, which we ate slowly over hours as the square emptied and refilled with people taking their evening stroll.

There is a church, simple and old, and a park where old men gather to argue about football. We did not visit any museums or historical sites. I have no photographs of famous landmarks. I have instead a memory of sitting on a bench eating ice cream that melted faster than I could manage, and another of watching swallows dart above the rooftops at dusk.

The surrounding countryside we explored minimally and slowly. One morning we drove perhaps ten minutes to find a spot by a stream, where we sat with our feet in the water and watched a heron stand completely motionless for what felt like an hour. Another afternoon we cycled along a flat track between fields, stopping frequently, going perhaps three miles in total. My legs complained more than they should have.

By the end of the week I had stopped checking my phone entirely. The news could manage without me. I had developed a minor tan line from my watch, which I considered a badge of honour. On our final evening we cooked a simple meal of bread, cheese, and tomatoes that tasted of actual sunshine, and sat by the pool watching bats appear against the darkening sky.

I returned home with sand in my shoes, half-read novels, and a profound commitment to doing less more often.