Mercury rising

Here's the promised pic of me, Peter Schmeichel and assorted children.

It has been hard to find things to blog about. Not much has happened in my life outside of work, shopping and going to the swimming pool. Today I should have been representing Lucy's school in a beach rugby tournament in Ras Al Khaimah. I'd been to the training sessions, bought some pool shoes to stop the sand burning my feet, but at the last minute it was inexplicably cancelled. Slightly deflated, we went instead to a beach club just over the border into Abu Dhabi called the Jazira Beach Club.

Although it's only May, and entry is much cheaper than the Dubai clubs, there was a strange end of season atmosphere about the place. The grass was unkempt, the fountains had been emptied and the beach cafe was all locked up. Apart from the fact that it was 42 degrees, it felt like I'd gone to a small English seaside town in December. It was almost deserted. A few people came and went, but generally we had the large pool to ourselves. I asked the barman at the pool bar if it was always this quiet. 'No', he said,'it will get busy again in September when the temperature starts to fall'.

September seems a long way off. On Thursday we went to a very beautiful and serene bar and restaurant called Eauzone. It is in a hotel called the One and Only Royal Mirage. Although it is apparently much favoured by footballers and soap stars, we didn't let that put us off. We sat outside and I nearly choked on my beer as I paid for the first drinks (£9 a pint!). Anyway, what the hell - if that's the price of keeping the riff raff out then so be it. After a short while we were forced inside by the heat and hunidity. The weather people here say that it's going to be a scorching summer. I don't think we'll be sat outside again much for the next few months. I'm sure you'll all be sympathetic!

For the purposes of posterity, I've decided to list a few of the things going on in Dubai at the moment.

There was another big construction fire this week - this time on the Palm Jumeriah. Great publicity!

A smoking ban was announced for public places. Great, I thought, until I read that this is the fourth time in as many years that this has been announced and not implemented.

A new interchange near our house finally opened (after well over a year of construction) and has knocked about 30 minutes off my daily drive. However, thanks to extraordinarily inept planning, it's going to have to be rebuilt soon because of all the new apartments opening up in the Marina.

There is a big thing about number plates here, but it's all to do with how low the number is. A man in Abu Dhabi this week paid a world record 25.2 million Dirhams (£3.5 million) for the number 5. He also paid a couple of million quid more for 45 and 55.