AUGUST DAYS: John Downes experiences the visual thrill of Spraoi's invasion of the streets of Waterford in a hectic 24-hours

The elderly woman sitting near the bus station in Waterford city is almost imperceptibly tapping her foot. Just up from where she is sitting, volunteers and stage crew are busy setting up a stage for the Spraoi festival, which will begin a little later.

Far from being annoyed by the thump, thump of the dance music, being played to test the sound system, she is getting into the swing in her own understated way.

"The festival is primarily aimed at a family audience," says Miriam Dunne, Spraoi's director of programming.

"It's essentially for the people of Waterford. If other people want to come along, that's great. But families are essentially what you get."

Billing itself as the largest free street festival ever to have taken place in Waterford, the 2½-day multicultural gathering features street theatre, comedy and song and dance performances in many locations all over the city.

With a budget of approximately €350,000, not including significant additional corporate sponsorship, the festival has grown in recent years, generating significant revenue for the city's traders.

Indeed, even trying to get a hotel in the city proved almost impossible, evidence of how popular the event has become.

"The hotel we're sitting in last year ran out of food on the Sunday," confides Miriam Dunne with a chuckle. "And Supermacs ran out of everything but water."

This has led to suggestions that Spraoi now rivals the larger Galway Arts Festival, although this is something Dunne diplomatically dismisses.

"We're very different from Galway. Ours is all free - we have no box office," she says.

"It's a very different vibe, in that Spraoi is free and on the streets, where a lot of the Galway stuff is ticketed. Spraoi is hugely visual, simply because it's on the streets. You're tripping over it, so you can't avoid it."

And tripping over is something many of the street acts are clearly good at.

It's lunchtime and Mr Culbuto is lying face down on the ground. A Frenchman fixed to a round ball which acts as a pendulum, the programme notes state that he is "pulled into the streets and left there. He's completely at your mercy".

While others merely shake his hand, one small boy runs up and, with over-enthusiastic vigour, pulls too hard. Realising what he has done, and embarrassed by the crowd of 100 or so people watching him, he tries to hide behind his mother.

Crying with laughter, his mother wipes a tear from eyes hidden behind sunglasses, and sends him back to upright Mr Culbuto again. This he promptly does, and Mr Culbuto is off swinging once more.

On nearby Barronstrand Street, Australian Bruce Airhead is trying to climb inside a man-sized balloon. Once he has achieved this, to the cheers of the 200-odd spectators, he promptly tries to climb out again. More cheers. It's that kind of festival.

Earlier, the stern-faced Irish Society of Pessimists, aka the Natural Theatre Company, walked around John Roberts Square holding placards which tell the crowds not to smile. Inevitably, they had the opposite effect.

Add to this crazy Frenchmen pretending to be Scottish (Mic Mac); samba bands (Carnival Collective); and bouncing human kangaroos (Icarus Kangaroo), and there is an overwhelmingly good-humoured party spirit about.

As the day moves into night, the warm summer air does much to keep the spirit alive.

A crowd gathers on Michael Street. They are drinking al fresco and dancing to the band playing a jig in the open air. People of all ages are here, from Dancing Father With Baby On Head - not one of the acts but an ever-present feature of this weekend - to those in their mid-teens.

It is down by the quays fronting onto the River Suir, near the BEAT FM stage, where most of the younger crowd is found, making the most of the fine weather.

A festival club opens after 11.30 p.m. and the 20-piece Warwickshire Youth Jazz Orchestra is working its funky magic on the dancing crowds.

Upstairs, a rock band, the Siam Collective, plays to a younger audience.

The Spraoi festival has, as its finale every year, a Sunday night parade which is attended by some 60,000 people. This year the theme is "the destruction of art," explains joint artistic director Mike Leahy.

The floats are spectacular, including a giant Madame Butterfly, replete with female mime artist on top; a semi-destroyed statue accompanied by a punk rock band; and a confetti shredder which spits out pages from great literary works.

"The idea is that each float is progressively attacked and destroyed by a mob until finally only Madame Butterfly is left," says Leahy.

The 250-strong "mob" are all volunteers, he says.

"It's not often you get the chance to go out and perform in front of 50,000-60,000 people.

"For some people, this is the closest thing they'll get to playing Slane Castle."