Dubai feeling the heat

"Last week the owner of a Mediterranean-style villa on one of the Palm Jumeirah's beachy fronds facing the Atlantis dropped his asking price from $4.9 million to $3.6 million and then $3.13 million, and offered to throw in his Bentley as well. "Our client has his money stuck in the markets and he desperately needed it to run his business," says real estate agent Anthony Jerish. "Still, nobody bought it. Maybe we will sell the Bentley separately. I don't know." No, this isn't the old Dubai at all." Says an article in Newsweek.

Discount sale plus free car with purchase. You sell your Bentley for some cash to tide you over. You have a Bentley in the first place. It still sounds very much like Dubai to me.

The article is very interesting and seems to spell doom, but what came through, rather surprisingly, was that Dubai's party was not over, just that the club may be closing for maintenance.

And Dubai needs to weather this, for all our sakes. The city is about naive pleasure-seeking, unashamed self-indulgence, over-the-top grasshopper-style living. It is the world's most fantastic Disneyland and if we come to the stage when the playgrounds need to be dismantled and sold for scrap, there will be no hope left.

We need the Fashion Weeks, where flocks of people spends days agonising over whether winter is about frill or flounce. The magazines that have nothing more portentous to tell you than that the season's hottest colour is one that makes you look like a corpse left in water. Impractical shoes, unattainable cars, unnecessary embellishments - these are very important; little reassuring pockets of positivity and optimism, as uplifting as any "inspirational quote".

That single-minded joy in creature comforts and shallow unconcern for the rest of it is an affirmation of the human spirit. It's one of the qualities that's got us this far. Dubai is the poster child of this. It must continue to party.