riverside festival: Saturday

A two-day family festival of music and fun on the banks of the River Soar. The annual Riverside Festival has grown into one of the city’s biggest free events, bringing live music, family activities and workshops and all the fun of the waterways to the heart of the city. The festival takes place on the mile straight of the river, Western Boulevard and in Bede Park. It is run by Leicester City Council and sponsored by local social landlord Riverside and ECHG.

I really like this event, not least because it's all just round the corner from where I've lived for the past four years, in a part of the ciity I pass through every day. I love the transformation, and for this fairly ordinary part of the city - my part of the city - to be the focus of attention for a couple of days.

Along the riverside, on Western Boulevard and in Bede Park, there are performers and entertainers of various kinds entertain, falconry displays, art workshops and a street market, as well as BMX displays, a mini cinema, puppet shows, a mobile petting zoo, circus skills workshops and arts and crafts on show. Some of Leicester's top bands perform on a temporary stage. For the first time, From Dusk2Dawn magazine hosts a fringe festival bringing three nights of live music to venues along Braunstone Gate.

Brightly decorated narrowboats take pride of place along the river (we can vote for our favourite). Decorated boats parade along the river, accompanied by live traditional jazz, and there are also activities involving boats ranging from coracles and canoes to a floating tea shop. One popular activity on the water is the lantern parade. There's a stall on which we can decorate a paper lantern, which will be put into the water, with a tea light, just as it gets dark around 2100. People colour their lanterns and write dedications on them. There must be about a hundred of them in the water later. Trouble is, though, it's not exactly a fast-flowing stretch of water so there's very little movement in the lantern parade. Some folk go out in a couple of rowing boats to try and generate some movement in the water, using their oars. The lanterns certainly move at this prompting, but the trouble is, they're paper lanterns, with tea lights inside them - tea lights, with their little naked flames. Well, after moving for only a few yards, the lanterns bunch up, some of the tea lights fall over inside the lanterns and suddenly there's a conflagration on the river. Now the oars that have been responsible for this catastrophe are pressed into service to save the situation, being used to chuck water on the flames. This, as I'm sure you can imagine faithful reader, rather spoils the occasion. The final use of the oars this evening - as far as the lanterns are concerned - is to scoop up the limp and lifeless paper and drop it all into the bottom of the boats to be brought back to the bank for dismal disposal.