Two weeks ago, readers left me sitting on a rooftop bar in Florence with my best mate, overlooking the Duomo, drinking a limoncello spritz with a stomach nicely lined with seven courses by Michelin star Chef Sardi Antonello.

You’d only be human if, after a year of travel columns, you silently wished for some calamity might befall me, a plague or pestilence or maybe just a bad oyster. And if you’re in the mood for some schadenfreude, you're in luck, because the next day, I woke up in that beautiful Florentine villa with my face so red and swollen that I looked like Sloth from the Goonies.

I initially just did what any Scottish woman would do, I slapped on a bit more warpaint, a giant pair of sunnies and ordered a medicinal Campari and soda. But my face became more alarming, not to mention painful and when I went to a pharmacy, first a stylish wooden-panelled apothecary in Florence with a pharmacist who looked like he'd been chiseled by Michelangelo himself, and then the slightly more mortal but very helpful chap at Boots in Heathrow, they all looked at me and said with different accents but equal horror, "You need to see a doctor!" 

This obviously wouldn't be a problem. Except that mums do not get two nights and three days to themselves for nothing. There was a careful negotiation to get our time away and part of the deal was that we would take her kids, my godchildren, to a surfing camp in Devon as soon as we got home. So, smeared on lotions and potions, I took enough antihistamine to fell a workhorse, and still, my face looked like it had been inflated with a bicycle pump, oiled and then broiled.

This is how it came to be that, when my godkids and their mum were on the train to Barnstaple, I was in an early morning Soho NHS walk-in clinic. As she welcomed me in, the nurse said: "This really isn't this sort of clinic, you know? It's for other purposes." I explained that I understood that but I’d called 111, they’d sent me here, and please give me something so I don’t frighten children in the street.

By the time I was on the train home to Sheffield full of pills, and, no, still no better, my godkids had already ridden a beautiful, scenic, open-top bus arriving directly at the beach in Croyde and were already installed in a bell tent at Downend Point Campsite with sea views across the Bristol Channel to Lundy Island. That evening, my godson had "the best burger he'd ever eaten": picked from a competitive field of thousands, while they watched a local artist perform at a mini-festival.

If you're wondering about the bell tent, it was apparently incredibly comfortable, and they found it especially spectacular to walk out onto the beach and have their breakfast and play a game of footie.

At the time they were setting down their jumpers for goalposts, I was in A&E in Sheffield and truly coming to terms with the erosion of the NHS, when I realized not a single vending machine was working.

Read more Kerry Hudson

My godkids and mate sent me regular photos trying to lift my spirits. And it sort of did, while I went from department to department stepping over dubious puddles on the lino. They sent a picture of them in their wetsuits and Lord’s of Down Surf Camp t-shirts, holding their surfboards. The school, which also offers reduced rate surfing on specific evenings to make learning to surf more accessible and affordable was set up by Simon Nicholson, a pro surfer and manager of England junior team of 2024 and Tom Sharon.

It's no surprise that the kids had an amazing time surfing. My godson messaged me to say that the instructor said there was "a high period, one-two swell and the wind was low". I didn't know what this meant, but I could tell from the emojis it was probably good.

At the time I was sitting in a canteen eating an ice-cold tuna salad my godkids were at an authentic Sri Lankan supper club on the beach. Quite the thing for my goddaughter who thinks chicken nuggets are a food group and won’t be dissuaded otherwise.

And, about the time that I was finally seeing a doctor who told me, despite my insistence that I was a vigilant old lady who wore a hat and sunscreen and stayed in the shade that, it was simply a sun reaction to medication (spoiler: it was not, I should have channelled some of my Scottish nana rage) they were all watching stars on the beach and listening to the waves.

My god kids had never had Sri Lankan curry, or indeed been surfing or been to Devon or ridden in an open top bus along the coast. While I couldn't be there, even with my series of ever more broken NHS waiting room seats and my squashed tomato face, I took real pleasure and joy in knowing that they were having new experiences.

Perhaps this is what being a godparent or just an adult, means? That eventually we have to, with good grace, pass on the things we love to the next generation and start writing letters about broken vending machines for kicks.