As the festive season approaches faster than the Polar Express at full speed the annual switching on of the Leicester Christmas Lights takes place at various locations around the city.
We begin the evening on High Street where we meet the Nutcracker Marching band, we`ll meet them again several times over the evening but for now we follow them to the clock tower which is already illuminated by lasers and patterns projected from the Haymarket balcony where BBC Radio Leicesters Ady Dayman and cast from De Montfort Halls Pantomime are getting the crowds ready for the big moment.
Past the Christmas food market and we find an eccentric fellow with his Pramdemonium a strange contraption with trumpets and bubbles playing organ music to entertain the crowds.
On to Town Hall Square now where illuminations and moving lights give the area a magical quality, we see two stilt walking angels towering over us, illuminated and performing graceful movements as they move through the crowd.
Soon from across the square the surreal sight of a 6ft penguin waddles into view and through the crowds.
With everything going on we almost miss the fact the lights on the Town Hall have come on meaning back at the clock tower Ady and friends have thrown the switch !, a Choir made up of several Leicester based groups sings we wish you a merry Christmas and is that Santa himself ?.
We return to the clock tower where the tree and streets are fully lit and on to St Martins Square where we re-join the Nutcracker Marching Band to count down and switch on the lights in the square.
As the evening comes to a close we see the band marching away followed by a crowd of people the festive season officially underway.
Merry Christmas Leicester
