It is a very useful trick to ensure that your friends and relatives go to live somewhere interesting so you can wangle invitations from time to time.

I have been incredibly lucky that many of my friends have obliged me by moving to really lovely spots around the globe and - somewhat rashly - invited me to stay.

Some invitations have been of the "oh do drop in any time you are passing" variety - safe in the knowledge that one is hardly likely to be 'just passing' Peking or Shanghai for example.

But it is nice to know that, should the unlikely actually happen and you were to be stranded in such inhospitable regions, you would have friends who would no doubt, once they had got over their surprise at the nonchalant phone call - "well I happened to be stranded here on my way to Outer Mongolia and remembered your kind invitation to drop in" - be absolutely delighted to welcome you to share their humble dinner of rice and yak's meat.

But I have had some lovely times in Munich where the Christmas Market is so picturesque and the drives out to the lakes and inland sea can be breathtakingly lovely.

Then there was Prague, where the friend with whom I travelled had connections at the University as well as the opera house, so we were able to enjoy both Gown and Town for incredibly low rates.

Bologna was another city of great delights where I was let off the hook to wander at will among the highways and byways, finding little craft shops in tiny streets and sit drinking coffee with the locals.

Paris, for many years my favourite city, was great fun when I took my daughter for the first time and we sat long into the night in Monmartre.

It is always more fun if you are fortunate enough to have friends with you who know the town or city well, so that you get to see the real spirit of the place, not just the tourist traps.

I even managed New York, although I must admit I saw more ice hockey than museums, but as I was with ice hockey journalists, that was hardly surprising!

My various sisters-in-law have had the good sense to settle in Devon and my daughter and son-in-law have made a habit of going there for part of their holidays for many years.

Consequently they are greeted like rather dim and distant relations (after all, who would choose to live anywhere else, say the locals, unless they were dim!) and when I go with them I am included in the greetings.

We have just spent a few lovely days down there and the moorland looks wonderful after the horrors of foot and mouth last year.

We visited our friends and caught up on all the family gossip and ate, it must be confessed, like lords.

One of my sisters-in-law lives in Brixham, right on the quayside in a house which has its ground floor at quayside level and then climbs, a room at a time, right up the side of the cliff.

We would never have got to know this wonderful part of the world if my sisters-in-law had not chosen to settle there and live out their days in such delightful surroundings.

It just shows that it really is a good idea to spread one's friends and relatives around very carefully indeed.

I've got the Norfolk Broads in my sights for my next trip, as dear friends of mine have just been foolish enough to send me their new address with the fatal words - "Do drop in." Well, I just might!