I have never been so pleased to see a swimming pool in my entire life, and that includes the time I nearly fell into one at a wedding in Torquay. The drive from Alicante airport to Caravaca de la Cruz had been straightforward enough, right up until I decided my phone knew better than the road signs and sent us up what I can only describe as a goat track with delusions of grandeur. My partner sat in silence for twenty minutes, which anyone who knows him understands is the loudest possible form of disapproval.

We arrived at the villa with the sun already dipping behind the hills, me still flustered from reversing down a slope that felt like a ski jump, and there it was. The pool. Glowing turquoise in the fading light, utterly still, completely indifferent to my navigational incompetence. I stood at the edge of our terrace with a warm beer from the boot of the hire car and felt something loosen in my shoulders that had been tight since approximately March 2019.

The villa itself was exactly the sort of place that makes you question your life choices back home. Spacious without being showy, with terracotta floors that stayed cool underfoot and shutters that actually kept the morning light where it belonged until you were good and ready. I am not someone who naturally slows down. I make lists about lists. I check weather apps for cities I am not visiting. Here, within about forty-eight hours, I had somehow transitioned to a person who considers a second cup of coffee on the terrace to be a genuine morning achievement.

Our days quickly settled into a rhythm so gentle it barely qualified as a rhythm at all. Breakfast became a leisurely affair involving local tomatoes that actually tasted of something, which I ate with bread and olive oil while reading the same paragraph of my novel three times because a gecko had appeared on the wall and frankly that was more interesting. I had brought three books with the optimistic intention of working through them systematically. I finished one in ten days and consider that a personal triumph.

The pool became the centre of everything, which is saying something in a town with an actual famous cross. We would drift about on inflatables that slowly deflated in the heat, emerging only for lunch or when the shade moved and forced us to relocate like very lazy sunflowers. I am not someone who naps, or rather I was not, until Caravaca. There is something about the afternoon heat here that makes a siesta feel less like indulgence and more like basic survival strategy. I would wake disoriented, slightly sweaty, entirely content.

We did venture out, of course, though never far and never with urgency. The town centre sits on a hill and rewards the modest effort of walking there with narrow streets, sudden glimpses of the surrounding valley, and the Basilica of Vera Cruz with its elaborate baroque facade. I am not religious in the slightest but I do appreciate a good bit of architecture, and the place has atmosphere in spades. We stopped for tapas at a bar near the main square, standing at the counter like proper locals, though my attempt to order in Spanish apparently sounded sufficiently tragic that the barman switched to English with what I can only describe as humanitarian concern.

The local market happens twice weekly and became another slow pleasure. I am not a natural food shopper at home, where it feels like a chore to be optimised. Here I would wander between stalls with no particular purpose, eventually selecting some cheese or fruit or almonds that I would then forget about until discovering them happily in the villa fridge. Everything tastes better when you have no schedule.

Evenings brought their own lazy magic. We would barbecue by the pool as the light faded, the air still warm, the only sounds being the occasional dog bark from somewhere down the valley and my partner's running commentary on whether the chicken was properly cooked. It always was, though he never quite believed it. We ate late, talked nonsense, watched stars appear in quantities that felt almost aggressive compared to London.

On our final morning I sat with that same warm beer feeling, though this time the beer was properly cold and I had earned my relaxation honestly, through ten days of dedicated practice. The gecko was back on the wall. My unread books sat in a forgiving pile. Somewhere out there was the road back to Alicante, and eventually the airport, and real life with all its noise and nonsense. I stayed on that terrace as long as I possibly could, doing absolutely nothing of any importance whatsoever, and I have never felt more genuinely productive in my entire life.