Come into the garden, Murad

How lovely that the new semi-detached "luxury" villas (=Bovis homes with tiny swimming pools) at Karama-by-the-Sea are to be named Garden View Villas. Because they won't be looking out on actual gardens, but rather The Gardens housing development. Nice.

In other news: a gentleman in Ajman has married his twelfth wife (he's 53, she's 18) in a bid to get into the Guinness Book of Records. Not for his copious spouses, but for his even more copious offspring. He has 63, he wants 100.

Perhaps most alarmingly, of his eight previous wives (Islam only permits four wives at a time) he divorced four, and four died. Assuming they were of a similar age as him, four women dying before the age of fifty is somewhat unusual. The UAE in general has excellent, free public health care for locals with modern and well equipped hospitals.

But then as recent research shows, women with more children die younger than those with fewer. A diet of dates and fish may be enough to sustain Mr Dad (sic) Mohammed Murad, but sadly not his lady-wives.