open up - it's the public

This weekend, nearly seven hundred grand, humble, wonderful, terrible, trendy and fusty buildings invited the general public to have a good old poke around. London Open House is an annual event which restores one's faith in mankind since it is wide-ranging, generous and free.

Portcullis House, cutting across St Stephen's Tower (am I a pedant for using the name of the building, rather than the bell (Big Ben) which it houses?), was showing off its surprisingly light and airy atrium, nestling within the troll-like fortifications. It also surprised us with its Gerald Scarfe exhibition, clearly illustrating the old maxim that politicians really would rather be insulted, even within their own workplace, than ignored. Glorious as the atrium may be, the meeting rooms looked as boring as meeting rooms anywhere else and we were left to guess the state of the offices above. It does make one wonder whether palatial quarters for MPs is the best use of taxpayer's money, even if they do let us into the lobby once a year. Would it be terribly ungrateful of me to ask how many hospitals we could have had instead if the MPs had continued to work inside tiny broom cupboards in the Palace Of Westminster? How about if they had just had a normal glass and steel box of the sort infesting every city in the world and the difference spent on hospitals - how many then?

Never mind. Let us move on. It was a day of crosses, starting with the numerous red crosses warning rascal drivers not to attempt to park and obscuring the view of, shame on us, London's most popular tourist attraction. Not only does this cursed thing have the effrontery to refer to its tawdry fairground ride as a 'flight', it even has the nerve to charge £15.50 for the experience. What is it with our infatuation with going up things to come down again and at such great expense? In the time it takes to queue up numerous times and trundle around in a glass dustbin, any self-respecting tourist could take a healthy walk around any number of beautiful scenic views, or the lazy ones could take a bus ride around them. Either option would be cheaper and more rewarding but, even though they are fairly obvious, I don't see the London Eye running out of suckers any time soon.

In case you can't make it out, the label in this rake's hat says 'My favourite bit of London'. I don't think the hat was original. A prize to the person who can identify the sculpture and its precise location - write me a comment telling me. No prizes for identifying the fellow in the other photograph although perhaps you would care to suggest the sort of hat which would best suit Mr Reuter. Even hatted, though, I do not feel that he will become anyone's favourite bit.

Another cross greeted us during the half-hour queue to enter the Lloyd's building and, once inside, the view down through the numerous floors to the bell and the clock and the tiny ant-like figures reminded me of Orson Welles in 'The Third Man', berating Joseph Cotton for his sentimentality and asking him, from atop an observation wheel not altogether unlike the London Eye, whether he would "...really worry if one of those dots stopped moving", given that he was making a large profit from stopping quite a few such dots. Bearing in mind the recent and continuing financial turmoil, I can honestly say that I would worry about the fate of the dots but, at the same time, am concerned how many of the normal occupants of that building could say the same.

Three more crosses against a beautiful pollution-coloured sunset. N was in the bath at the time.

Finally, I leave you with hope, or maybe I should say Hope.