We had been on the road from Alicante airport for the best part of two hours when I realised the sat nav had been taking us on what I can only describe as a scenic tour of every orange grove in eastern Spain. My partner Dave, who had insisted he "knew a shortcut," sat in the passenger seat with the map app glowing accusingly on his phone. The mishap, if you can call a forty-five minute detour through a village where the only living thing we saw was a very judgmental goat, was entirely his fault. I say this with love, but also with the lingering memory of me trying to reverse our hire car down a lane barely wide enough for a scooter while he made helpful comments like "you've got loads of room on the left" as I grazed yet another bougainvillea.

By the time we pulled up at the villa in Els Poblets, I was ready to eat my own arm. The place looked lovely, all whitewashed walls and a terrace that promised proper evening drinks, but I had one mission and one mission only: find food immediately.

The kitchen, as it turned out, was going to be the real star of this holiday. Dave had talked a big game about self-catering, about how we'd shop like locals and cook proper Spanish meals. He had even packed a apron that said "Grill Sergeant" which should have been my first warning. That first evening, though, we were too shattered to attempt anything ambitious. We dumped our bags and walked the ten minutes to the main strip, finding a little bar doing simple tapas. I ate patatas bravas that were properly crispy, not the soggy things you get at home, and a tortilla that was still warm in the middle. Dave had calamari and made that face he does when he's genuinely happy, which is different from his polite face and his actually-I'm-fuming face. I know all three intimately after fifteen years.

The next morning, the self-catering fantasy began in earnest. We found the local market, which runs on Thursdays in Els Poblets itself, and I immediately went overboard. There were tomatoes that actually smelled of something, fat green peppers, bundles of herbs, and a fish stall where the man talked me through what he'd caught that morning. I came away with sea bream, convinced I was going to recreate some restaurant experience I'd once had in Barcelona. Dave bought bread from a bakery that had been operating since before his mother was born, and some local olive oil that came in a tin with a label featuring a very serious-looking donkey.

Back at the villa, the kitchen was genuinely well-equipped, which was both blessing and curse. Blessing because I had proper knives and pans. Curse because I had no excuse when things went wrong. The sea bream was... acceptable. I stuffed it with herbs and lemon, baked it simply, and it was fine. The problem was the paella rice I'd also bought, which I attempted to cook in the traditional wide pan I'd found in a cupboard. I had read no instructions. I had watched no videos. I had simply absorbed paella through cultural osmosis, apparently, and believed this qualified me. What emerged was a stodgy, slightly burnt-at-the-edges mess that Dave ate with the determined optimism of a man who knows his commentary is not required. "Good flavour," he said, which is what you say when texture has failed entirely.

I redeemed myself with simpler things. The villa had a barbecue, and I became genuinely competent at grilling those market vegetables, at rubbing bread with tomato and garlic in the proper Valencian style, at making a decent alioli that didn't split. We ate breakfast on the terrace every morning, proper breakfast too: fresh orange juice from the groves we'd got lost among, cheese and ham, those tomatoes crushed onto toast with olive oil that pools in little golden puddles.

There was a small supermarket near the beach, maybe a fifteen minute walk, where we bought eggs and milk and the inevitable emergency biscuits. But the real pleasure was planning around the market days, building meals from what looked good rather than any recipe. One evening I did a proper job with squid, cleaning it myself at the kitchen sink in a moment of unnecessary machismo that left me slightly traumatised and Dave highly amused. We had it simply, quickly grilled with garlic and parsley, and it was probably the best thing I cooked all fortnight.

By the end, I had stopped trying to be impressive and started just cooking what made sense for where we were. The kitchen at that villa saw my genuine improvement and my honest failures, sometimes on the same evening. We ate out too, of course, finding places in the town where the menu del dia was ten euros for three courses and wine, where the locals actually went, where no one was trying to be clever. But there was something about those meals we put together ourselves, slightly chaotic, occasionally disastrous, eaten with our feet up and the evening warmth still in the air, that felt like the real holiday. Dave even retired the Grill Sergeant apron after I threatened to burn it. Some victories are small, but they matter.