What, it asks every day, are you going to do about me?

And when are you going to get your fingers out?

These are questions that play on the minds of many Salopians. The fate and the future of this historic and protected building has been an intractable conundrum to test the patience.

• Demolition to start on sites near Shrewsbury's Flax Mill

A comparison might be made with Fort Dunlop, a building in Birmingham so huge that it was difficult to come up with a plan for it that worked. It lay empty and derelict for many years but has now been successful redeveloped.

So it can be done.

There have been no shortage of plans for the old Maltings at Shrewsbury, which is historically and architecturally important as using construction techniques which make the building a forerunner of modern skyscrapers.

To date the work that has been done has been more about arresting decline than progressing with the expensive visions for the future.

But in the coming days Shrewsbury folk are going to see a real difference in developments which are a significant step forward as demolition work clears three buildings surrounding the site as part of the overall plan to regenerate the area.

One of those to go will be the bus depot which, as it happens, is an interesting old building in itself, dating from 1920.

The demolition amounts to a statement of intent to be welcomed as positive progress towards the big prize, which is to regenerate the Flax Mill and redevelop the area successfully.

However the convoluted recent history means that optimism that the Flax Mill saga is approaching a satisfactory conclusion must remain on ration.

Knocking things down is the easy bit. The cheers will have to wait until things are being built up.