Last year’s memories of this event are distinctly waterlogged.

"This time round, the sun shone: making it feel like escapist holiday fun to stand idly by and watch the odd-bod ingredients of Roofless, presented by UZ Arts and Conflux over the weekend, turn the Merchant City precincts into an open-air playground for slinky acrobats, comic pranksters and artfully anarchic street entertainers.

Who would have thought that the seemingly strait-laced woman, in white blouse, long grey skirt and sensible shoes, would hoist her hems and shimmy into a hip-swaying hula routine ... where the hula hoop was spurting real flames as she tootled on a clarinet. A bit of a crowd-stopper and just one of the delights in Virginia Davis’s Symposium, a cod lecture with music where Rachel Ponsonby, in the guise of a geeky academic, kept many of us rooted to the spot for 20 minutes with her whimsical material and wittily bizarre instruments."