This being the Glasgow Fair, I'm off doon the watter.

The river Seine, not the Clyde. A bateau mouche, not the Waverley sadly.

I will be in my new Paris flat to spend much of next week exploring the traiteurs of the 11th arrondissement.

That's traiteurs as in food shops, nothing treasonous. I hope they are as to-die-from as the establishments near my former Paris flat in the 20th arrondissement.

I loved the old flat but it was five flights up without a lift. The new one is on the first floor. And it's only a few hundred yards walk to Pere Lachaise, the famous Paris cemetery. I will pop in and pay my respects to Oscar and Jim. That's Wilde of Reading Gaol fame and Morrison from The Doors.

My Paris flat is much more comfortable than my place in Cannes which was frankly poky. And superior to my dark and stuffy apartment in Florence.

To this list, I must add the loft in Amsterdam overlooking a canal (what else?). A fabulous high-ceilinged Hapsburg flat in Budapest, a panoramic view of Rio de Janeiro, and a rural fastness in the Cevennes complete with scorpions. It's a new home in the French Pyrenees in September.

No, I didn't win the Lottery. All these abodes come into my possession through home exchanges on the internet.

This is the best way to have a property abroad. Stay there for a week or two and hand back the keys. No electricity bills, no rates, no problems with the neighbours.

Plus you get new books to read, DVDs to watch, and paintings to admire. You feel less like a tourist because you are living like a local.

All this is made possible by my small flat near the beach in Barcelona which is popular with house-swappers. Glasgow (not even the west end) would have the same attraction. I know, I turned down an offer to exchange Barcelona for Bearsden.

The other part of the equation is you have strangers living in your place some of the time.

This has not been a problem. Apart from the people who left a sink full of dirty dishes and the flat needed to be fumigated.

Hardly surprising since their place had been irretrievably minging and had a freezer with yellow snow and plastic containers with what looked like body parts. Itself, an interesting experience in its own way.

tom shields Home for the holidays

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