Things potter along here in Fujairah. It’s Islamic New Year this weekend and I was wondering about hopping over to Cairo to catch up with that part of my life – it still feels like a second home. May do. Undecided yet.

Car jobs have included ordering a set of UJs and wheelbearings for the Discovery as to my knowledge they haven’t been changed for at least 5 years, and there’s a vibration underneath that feels like a UJ’s about to go when she’s running at about 40mph.

I’ve also been calibrating a set of Staun tyre deflaters. These are second hand from a mate here in the UAE – I have a set with my Defender back home in the UK but having a second set is always handy. The trouble is these have been set at 10psi for a long time and I’d rather they were set at 18psi so I’ve been resetting their calibration. Stauns being Stauns however they can lose accuracy after a while as the brass gets worn, so I was rather alarmed to see that one deflated a tyre to 12psi even after I’d reset them. Annoying, but much better than the Chinese set I bought in Cairo – copies of the Stauns – one of which deflated one of my tyres completely.

Had a craving for shisha last night – a habit that Cairo’s left me with. It’s hard to find one at a sensible price here in the UAE (waterpipe, hubbly-bubbly, bong, narghileh, call it what you like – and no, it’s tobacco, not hashish) and they also seem to prefer more artificially-flavoured shisha than in Egypt, Lebanon or Jordan. I had a halfway good one in the end at Al Meshwar, a Lebanese restaurant down the road from where I live, but it was still unpleasantly expensive – or maybe Cairo just spoiled me for the rest of the Middle East!

Found an interesting location for Bumblebee’s first trials in proper desert sand – at nearby Mleiha rock there’s a large sandstone escarpment covered in marine fossils and surrounded by soft dune sand. When the weather cools off a bit (and I replace the bearings and UJs) that’s where we will be headed. Watch this space!