Out and about in ..... Dubai

Just recently I was in Dubai for 48 hours which, on reflection, was about 36 hours longer than anyone really needs to be in such a place. It is quite simply a monopoly board made into reality; pornography for real-estate agents. Quite literally. Everywhere you look there are new offices and apartment towers, sprouting up ever-taller and more lavish in a deliberate effort to eclipse their neighbours. Last year people mortgaged their futures to buy an apartment in a prime, sunny location with commanding views. This year the same people are sitting in an overshadowed nameless backwater which everybody wants to move out of - if only they could find somebody to sell to. Ironically the oblique admission that something is wrong comes in the form of a huge, 30 storey awning bedecking an empty block. In bright post-office red, featuring a white HMG crown it states; “Keep Calm - There Is No Bubble”.

Keep Calm - There is no bubble !

Dubai being Dubai, the afternoons are punishingly hot, therefore everyone heads down to the mega-malls in the evenings. This month the biggest and best of these is the Dubai Mall, sprawling in the shadow of the great Burgh Al Kalifa tower. As expected the mall offers everything from boutiques by Tiffany's and De Beers, right through Burberry and Cartier down to H&M, M&S and Waitrose. Milling around are people of culture and taste from every corner of the world; all trim, well groomed and well dressed in suits, business casuals or nicely pressed flowing Arabian robes. Then of course there are the Brits; the only international contingent unshaven, unkempt, tottering around with beer bellies bursting from faded corporate t-shirts, cheap cut-off shorts, flabby hairy legs and untrimmed moustaches (even the women), plastic flip flops and uncut toenails. Not to mention their kids constantly running amok and their toddlers without shorts or skirts openly sporting full pampers for all the world to see.

Perhaps it’s me but after delivering the 2012 Olympics with such resounding success and closing with a ceremony that showcased Britain’s cutting edge contributions to the modern era, I somehow thought that the Brits had rediscovered a modest sense of national pride. They seemed to have worked themselves out of that decades-old hole of “it’s-not-the-losing-it’s-the-taking-part” Surely, now, Brits around the world can come out of the closet, stand tall, proud and ride the wave of 2012 ? Sadly not. The Brits in Dubai are a social demographic alone, apart and adrift. There are Indian shop staff, Pakistani taxi drivers, Bangladeshi waiters, North African sanitary workers and Filipino nannies, but none of them are wombling around the Dubai Mall like they’re out for an ice cream on Clacton seafront.

So after ordering my food in a stiff, humourless German accent and saluting the waiters with “Danke schoen” and “Aufwiedersehen” I promptly marched out before my credit card betrayed my true nationality.