ACE is high as UAE gets back to business

It’s definitely picking up, you know. After all the prognoses of doom and gloom for this autumn, in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the pace of economic activity has noticeably quickened in the past couple of weeks.

The schools are back, as are the traffic jams, and my most reliable indicator of commercial life – the length of time I have to wait in the excellent Lebanese barber’s shop in Dubai’s Crowne Plaza hotel – tells me that the UAE is starting to recover from the financial crisis.

Over the summer you could get a short back-and-sides on demand, with manicure thrown in; now you face a 20-minute queue before you sit to face the mirror.