In any capital city, the best way to discover what is on its mind is to ask a taxi driver. 'Olympic legacies? Nah, I can't see any myself,' concluded the cabbie as we shuttled across the host city of the 2012 Games, the roar of the crowd that cheered Usain Bolt to his historic record still clanging in our ears. Evidently, sat in the driver's seat was what the city's major, Boris Johnson, would declare an Olympo-sceptic or gloomadon popper for believing the Games would be - and have been - a disaster.
'I've enjoyed the Olympics and that,' the taxi driver continued. 'I admire those athletes doing what they've done, training and all that for hours on end. But for me? As a cabbie? It's been disastrous. It's been a great shame for the shops and other businesses, too.
'You wait. When the retail figures or whatever they call it come out, they will show we all made a loss during the last three weeks. Nah, mate. No Olympic legacies here,' he said, miffed over how the London streets, in the height of the summer tourism season, could be so empty of fares.
London's famous shops are also bemoaning a lack of footfall. Tourists have stayed away. Many locals have also taken flight, leaving central London with a forlorn feeling, though in recent days the city is starting to swell again as the end of the Olympics approaches.
The taxi driver's gloom could not have been more different from the euphoria hours earlier in a press conference close to the Houses of Parliament. There, a buoyant Johnson and a panel of business investors assembled to announce the legacies of the 2012 Games.
As Olympic tradition dictates, dreaded questions about legacies are now being asked as we near the end of competition. Now is the time to talk up the power of the Games and the benefits to be reaped from staging them.