We have had one nice surprise. The elegant white wheel of the London Eye (wholly private sector, with not a penny of Lottery money) hanging out over the river is a fine thing. It is as dramatic a foil to the Edwardian classicism of architect Ralph Knott's building as anything Mr. Saatchi's squad could devise. But the big bite the Eye has taken out of one corner of County Hall for its ticket office and shop does the building no favours.

As you wander round today, looking at the banal new neo-classical apartment blocks built behind, or at the vandalized hulk of the concrete 1970s extension that never found a re-use, or at the empty rooms that briefly housed the disastrously unpopular "F.A Premier League Hall of Fame", or at the nausea-inducing dirty-pink foyer of the Travel Inn, there's not much to lift your spirits. In fairness, the owners had a tough job. Knott's baroque building, won in competition in 1908 but only finished in 1933 and extended several times later, is ponderous Edwardian baroque of a peculiarly depressing kind.