Right then, where do I even begin? Probably with the hire car and my spectacular inability to operate a Spanish petrol pump, which is how I found myself standing in a forecourt just outside Palma, frantically pressing every button on the machine while a queue of remarkably patient Majorcans formed behind me. A chap in a faded Real Mallorca shirt eventually wandered over, sighed in that particular way locals have when dealing with hopeless tourists, and sorted it in roughly four seconds. I thanked him profusely. He asked if I was lost. I said yes, essentially. He laughed and said, "You will like the views, I think." He had no idea how right he was, or how much I'd need that kindness again before the week was out.

The drive to La Casa De Las Vistas took me through streets that felt properly lived-in, not the polished tourist strips I'd half-expected. I got myself turned around twice because my phone insisted a certain alley was passable, which it absolutely was not, not unless your vehicle was roughly the width of a supermarket trolley. A woman hanging washing from her balcony shouted directions down to me, something about "izquierda" and a lot of arm-waving that I mostly misunderstood. I waved back like an idiot and somehow stumbled onto the right road anyway.

The property itself sits up in the hills with that satisfying feeling of having escaped the bustle without actually going anywhere remote. Maria, who manages the place, met me at the gate with keys and a expression that suggested she'd already heard about my petrol pump performance from someone. Small island, I suppose. She showed me round with the efficient pride of someone who knows every quirk of a building and has made peace with most of them. "The hot water," she said, pausing meaningfully by the bathroom, "it has opinions." I liked her immediately.

That evening I walked down to the nearest proper shop for supplies, the kind that sells everything from fresh bread to lightbulbs to something unidentifiable in jars. The man behind the counter, Toni, had the weathered look of someone who'd spent forty years explaining his merchandise to confused foreigners. I asked about the jars. He said something rapid in Mallorquin, saw my face, and switched to slow, theatrical Spanish with hand gestures that made it somehow worse. We settled on English eventually, or his version of it, which involved a lot of pointing and the word "good" repeated with varying emphasis. I bought bread, cheese, and something I still believe was probably olive tapenade but might have been a very ambitious chutney. Toni wrapped everything with the care of a man conducting a minor ceremony, and refused my attempt at counting out exact change, instead taking what he wanted and sliding the rest back with a wink.

Back at the house, I sat on the terrace with my mystery purchase and watched the lights of Palma begin to twinkle below. Maria had been right about the hot water, incidentally. It did have opinions. But sitting there, slightly lost, slightly ridiculous, surrounded by the murmur of a neighbourhood that had already adopted me as its temporary, bumbling project, I felt something shift. I'd arrived expecting a holiday property and found instead a little pocket of people who seemed genuinely pleased I'd bothered to turn up, even if I couldn't work a petrol pump or identify preserved vegetables. The views were spectacular, obviously. But it was the faces I kept seeing in my mind, the laughter, the generous exasperation, that told me this particular trip was going to be different from the usual fly-and-flop affairs I'd settled into over the years. I was absolutely right, and absolutely not prepared for how much that would matter.