Elsewhere, on the northern side of the basin, is a rather good 1930s brick building, once a depot for the former Marylebone council as a surviving plaque makes clear. That will get swept away in the next phase of Rogers building. There is also the rather shabby but undeniably real North Westminster Community School, tucked between the new office blocks and the Westway. That's another of those London moments, where glitz meets grime. No worries: the developers are building schools elsewhere so that they can clear this one away, complete with its grittily multi-ethnic mix of comprehensive pupils, and build more shiny blocks in its place.

So the sanitization of Paddington proceeds apace, to the extent that it comes as a surprise to learn that the canal basin is actually alive and full of wriggling fish. It is obviously good in economic terms that dereliction should be tackled. It is also good environmentally to re-use urban land to build on, particularly a place like this which is plugged into the public transport system. However the feel of the place is not London, but a cut-down less ambitious version of Potsdamer Platz, Berlin. In its way, it is good. It brings employment and housing, some of it affordable. It's just that - I can't help it - it was much more real, and infinitely more interesting, when it was derelict.

*Note to Americans: "Domestos" is a brand of domestic bleach, available in Britain and Europe since the 1920s, that claims to kill all known germs.