Sometimes I can do nothing but effuse about London. It's impossible not to on occasions. Tell me, I know it stinks of insufferable metropolitanism and the 'there's no life beyond zone 6' bunker mentality, which is how I once felt before I moved here three decades ago. You have to realise though that this place does wow and excite and amaze even when you think the cup cannot run over any more.

The Kings Cross St Pancras complex has had the transformation of all transformations, the de luxe, top of the range treatment. An ulcer become a pearl. I've spent many hours here, pre and post metamorphosis, either waiting for trains or getting off or getting on them. So much time spent there that I stopped seeing it. A place to grab a coffee and go, fret over delays; theorise how to get just the right seat in the quiet carriage, and that was it.

This afternoon I saw another side of this mighty urban diamond, and the best way - through the eyes of another. I spent probably five hours there lunching then wandering with an old friend through the complex.

 Lunch was magnificent: Searcy's restaurant, a deep leather,  amber hued restaurant surely channeling Grand Central's Oyster bar. Washed down with an idle saunter through the Victorian tiled, quasi gothic moorish palace that's the St Pancras hotel.

What I remember as a windswept, scruffy cab rank has been touched by the magician's wand and become the conservatory roofed reception cum atrium for the hotel. I thought how anaemic it looked when we made our way into it during the early afternoon, with a thin light over emphasising how vast the space is; then we went back towards dusk. It had become a cathedral of shadows, of honeyed warmth, intimate and personal. The power of light.

My revelation, which I explained to my friend was the sound of my tongue slapping on to the floor, was the complete makeover of what used to be the depressing, tawdry, down at heel booking office. The integrity of the room has not changed, and they've retained the chiselled booking office inscription; it's the spirit that has, a new life all together. It's been hugged and loved. Told it's beautiful. Polished and soaped up. A name too: the Gilbert Scott brasserie.

I walked in and immediately swooned; it's that fifties New York feel I love, afternoon cocktails, espressos at the bar, conversations in deep leather armchairs, romance and politics, art and mammon.

Something else that seldom fails to move my dial one way or the other and that's hubbub, commotion, activity. St Pancras was feverish this afternoon. No doubt picking up additional zip simply from the fact it's Friday afternoon. Probably the working week's only erogenous zone. Anything could happen.

There was a soundtrack: two young men playing thunderous four hand boogie woogie on one of the street pianos in the concourse. Bass and treble clefs flying like sparks from an anvil. It was red hot. Steaming twelve bar blues for a streaming, teeming destination. Can't get more apt than that.