I have never been so relieved to see a set of wooden spoons in my life. After a four-hour flight from Gatwick, a hire car ordeal that involved me trying to unlock someone else's Seat Ibiza for a solid five minutes, and a winding drive up through the hills of Gran Canaria, I finally arrived at the villa in San Bartolome de Tirajana. I flung open the door, dumped my suitcase, and made straight for the kitchen. There they were, hanging in a neat row. Wooden spoons. A proper knife block. A frying pan that did not look like it had seen the seventies. I nearly wept.

The mishap, though. I should tell you about the mishap. Somewhere between the airport and the village, my carefully packed cool bag had taken a tumble. My emergency supplies - a wedge of Manchego, some chorizo, a tub of olives - had escaped their packaging and formed what can only be described as a Mediterranean sludge at the bottom of the bag. The smell hit me as I was reversing into the villa's parking space. I spent my first twenty minutes in paradise on my knees in a rental car, scrubbing cheese oil off the upholstery with wet wipes and muttering apologies to a vehicle I did not own. Welcome to San Bartolome de Tirajana.

But the kitchen. Oh, the kitchen redeemed everything. I had booked the place partly for the pool and the view, I will admit, but mostly because the photos showed a proper hob and enough counter space to actually cook. Self-catering for me is never about saving money. It is about control. About wandering around a foreign supermarket at half nine in the morning, slightly sunburned already, trying to work out if something is passata or extremely runny ketchup.

The Mercadona in nearby San Fernando became my second home. The first morning, I went in for bread and milk and emerged an hour later with octopus in olive oil, some alarmingly purple potatoes, and a whole rabbit I had no immediate plan for. The woman at the till did not even blink. I suspect she sees my type every week. Back at the villa, I made a hash of the potatoes - boiled them to grey mush - but the octopus on toast with a squeeze of lemon and a drizzle of the local olive oil? That was proper. I ate it standing at the counter in my swimming trunks, still damp from the pool, feeling briefly like a man who has his life together.

The weekly market in San Bartolome itself, down in the village proper, was where I really came undone. I went for tomatoes and became embroiled in a conversation with a stallholder who spoke no English and had very strong opinions about my tomato selection. He kept swapping my choices for different ones, shaking his head, pressing ripe fruit into my hands until I capitulated. I left with three kilos of tomatoes, a bunch of herbs I still cannot name, and a papaya the size of a rugby ball. The papaya sat on the counter ripening to the point of collapse while I worked through the tomatoes in every form I could think of. Gazpacho that was mostly garlic. A sauce that reduced for two hours and tasted of actual sunshine. A pan con tomate situation that I ate for breakfast four days running.

My rabbit attempt came on day four. I had watched enough online videos to feel dangerous. The villa's oven, I discovered, runs approximately forty degrees hotter than it claims, a fact I learned when my herb-crusted masterpiece emerged looking like something from a fire safety demonstration. I picked the burnt bits off, shredded what remained into a sort of ragu with the last of the tomatoes, and served it with the local wrinkly potatoes - properly boiled this time, thanks to a WhatsApp call to my mother at eleven at night. It was not pretty. It was probably not even authentic. But eaten on the terrace with a glass of supermarket Rioja and the sun going down behind the mountains, it tasted like the holiday I had needed for two years.

I never did crack the papaya. It went in the bin on departure morning, overripe and slightly accusatory. But I left the remaining olive oil, a half packet of those purple potatoes, and a note for the next guests about the oven. Some knowledge should be shared. Some disasters, too.