THE transformation is almost complete. Having taken more than three years to build and costing £500 million, hopefully on schedule and on budget, our brand spanking new shopping bazaar will be unveiled to the world. Bristol finally takes centre stage.

Cabot Circus will provide visitors with more than 100 new shops plus restaurants, including 15 major flagship stores. With lots of new jobs and new visitors eager to spend their hard-earned cash, there is indeed much to celebrate. All those involved need to be congratulated for a job well done.

But in our eager anticipation to see the opening of Cabot Circus, have we not overlooked a few things?

On the opening day alone between noon and 8pm, about 100,000 people will enter our city centre. Can you imagine how many cars that will mean?

Yes, we have lots of big and even bigger car parks for them, but how are all these cars going to get in and then get back out?

Bristol already has the worst traffic problems outside of London. Surely, someone has thought about that and made plans for it? But, as a likely back-up, I hope everyone is preparing their favourite compilations on CD or MP3 players to listen to on the way to work and on the way home. May I recommend Road to Hell by Chris Rea.

This is going to have a huge impact on the emergency services' other road users. I do hope, nay pray, that someone has thought this part through.

But, as the credit crunch gets worse, it is ironic that we are being given one more excuse, temptation, reason (call it what you will) to spend our wealth on things we certainly will not need, but which we will be persuaded to buy because everyone else is buying it.

So, we will be persuaded to spend cash that we do not have and be convinced to take out loans we cannot afford, to buy things we do not need – all gift-wrapped in such a way that we will not even notice it until the red letters start arriving in the post.

And what of the banks, so willing to give us those loans?

Well, they can rest assured that they will earn their profits through charging us the interest. But if it all goes belly up, us taxpayers will no doubt be persuaded to bail them out. Heads you win, tails I lose!

But enough of my Victor Meldrew moment, now is a time for celebration.

The fact is that it is certainly about time that Bristol had a shopping centre worthy of the status of the city, as opposed to one that we could have found in any large village in the country!

Cabot Circus will be a huge step forward. It was a huge undertaking and an incredible development.

Here's just some of the extraordinary facts: 3.5 million cups of tea consumed during the build; one million bricks used; 33,000 tonnes of waste removed (60 per cent of which has been reused or recycled); 13,500 tonnes of steel frame used (equivalent to 108 blue whales); 2,700 panes of glass used; 30 trees planted, and even one harris hawk employed by the developers to prevent birds from nesting on the glass roof.

Cabot Circus will be launched at noon on September 25 with a huge theatrical celebration under the main dome of the new centre. This promises to be an extraordinary display and a unique moment for Bristol's city centre.

I, among 100,000 others, certainly hope to be there.