A hot topic here today, at least among the expat community:

Photos of the wife of John Terry, the Chelsea defender and former English captain, frolicking in almost nothing on the beaches of Abu Dhabi!

We are never surprised when WAGs (Wives And Girlfriends) go out and about with little or no clothes on. It’s kinda how they roll. It’s how they get the attention of dunder-headed footballers.

But they don’t generally do it on the beaches of Abu Dhabi.

These photos of Toni Terry popped up at the Daily Mail, an English newspaper.

Can look at these two ways:

1. The way the Mail is spinning it — if someone is in good shape like that, after two kids, she should be applauded.

2. And the way fretting expats in deeply conservative Abu Dhabi are spinning it — that it is a scandal that this woman would be wearing so little while on these shores.

One British woman wrote an e-mail to The National expressing her shock, shock, I tell you, that a British woman would display herself like that in this city and in this country. (Otherwise, we may never have even heard about it.)

She wrote:

I hope that The National will print a short piece about this article. It is a disgusting display that gives the world the wrong message about Abu Dhabi and I really think something should be reported locally about how inappropriate this type of behavior is on a beach in front of children. The black swimming costume would be inappropriate on many Western beaches. They are having a laugh and it is disrespectful to the country. Does Abu Dhabi really need these type of people?

(Signed) British expat who covers her shoulders out of respect.

A couple more thoughts here:

–Hard to imagine this is a current photo. It likely is five-plus months old, going back to when it was nice and sunny here and dreary in England, and when the Premier League wasn’t playing. That is, in December. If John and Toni Terry went to the beach here in the past week or so … they’re giving new meaning to that “Mad dogs and Englishmen/noon-day sun” thing. It’s been horrific here for a month. Hot enough to kill. Nobody is going to the beach. (Which means if it did actually happen, no one at all saw Toni Terry’s teeny suit, and she probably passed out minutes later from exposure.)

–I would have expected this in Dubai much more than in Abu Dhabi. Tourists tend to go to free-wheeling, off-the-leash Dubai, where a suit like that one might will be winked at. Abu Dhabi is, in fact, more prudish. Even, it turns out, the expats.