Looking back over the weekend and the visit of La Princesse to the streets of Liverpool, it’s hard not to be impressed at how well everything went.

For a city that’s taken a fair bit of flack of its Capital of Culture celebrations and an under-fire council derided as the worst in the country, La Machine’s giant mechanical spider brought some welcome relief, and as a major source of traffic chaos was a lot more welcome than the Big Dig.

The more cynical among friends of mine were blown away by the spectacle when they got round to seeing La Princess in the, er, flesh and several friends confessed to being rather moved by their sight of the big beast.

As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t consider the mooted price tag of £1.6m to be anything to get remotely worked up about – the council and culture company have wasted far larger sums on far less successful projects and the PR generated must far outweigh that measly sum.

For a long weekend everyone stopped thinking about the evil cabal, Warren Bradley, Everton and groundshares, the fourth grace, that report on the council, Pete Price, Harry Enfield, thieving scousers and everything else that tarnishes the city.

Liverpool was making new around the world, and not for some tawdry Beatles Day nonsense.

There was a glorious mechanical giant fucking spider walking around the city amid fire, hoses, fights with diggers and a huge firework display – backed by a superb group of musicians.

It cut through class, religion, race, background, attitudes, interests. It moved children to squeals of delight and adults to tears. It was superbly accessible public art.

I watched on Sunday night quietly rapt as La Princesse disappeared into the tunnel, alongside thousands of others. I wished it could have gone on all week.

Well done to La Machine, Artichoke, the council and the Culture Company. For once, everyone got it right.

My last set of La Princesse photos are on Flickr. Do leave a comment or I won’t feel validated.

Having returned from being soaked at the Albert Dock I’ve uploaded some photos of La Princess – La Machine’s giant spider that has been ‘terrorising’ Liverpool.

As I mentioned yesterday La Princess looks much more imposing in the, er, flesh and really should be seen over the weekend if you’re in Liverpool.

There’s been some talk about the price tag for the giant spider – and at £2m it wasn’t cheap, but set against almost £750,000 to gag two ex-council bigwigs it doesn’t look too shabby, especially when the thousands of Liverpudlians that braved the storms are taken into account.

With two more days to go there’s plenty of rumours about the Sunday night finale, which involve the Mersey Tunnel.

After a day of clinging to the side of a tower block in Liverpool, the La Machine spider made its way through the streets of Liverpool in preparation for its unveiling tomorrow.

As I’m now a full-fledged multi-media node I’ve uploaded a video I took of it onto Youtube, which is below. Later I may post a tweet, do some inbound linkage on Facebook and mess about on Flickr for a bit, just ‘cos I can.

Undoubtedly a more impressive sight than photos suggest, the La Machine spider looks like pure evil and some have wondered exactly what the mechanical arachnid has to do with the Capital of Culture, especially at a price tag of £2m.

Tish and fipsy, I reckon, so what if it’s just a bloody big spider. La Machine is clearly built to stalk the city over the next few days and I can’t wait.

Even though the beast was apparently dormant today it attracted crowds of hundreds, ready with camera phones and texting their mates.

And if I can go a bit low culture for a minute there really needs to be a bit of spectacle about Liverpool 08 after a wet 60 minutes watching the bloody Wombats and Ringo Bloody Starr last winter.

After all, what city isn’t enlivened by the sight of an enormous frightening eight-legged behemoth parading around its streets?

I only hope it breathes fire and makes a particular detour to locate Pete Price and messily devour him.

Update: Although the bad weather made me turn back in my dinner hour this morning there are plenty more opportunities to see La Princess – as the spider is apparently called – over the weekend.

Details seem bafflingly hard to find on the net, so I’ve posted them here:

Friday 5th September

• 11.30am – 1pm Outside the ACC, Albert Dock

• 6.30pm – 9pm From the ACC to the Cunard Building, via Salthouse Dock

Saturday 6th Sept

• 11.30am-12.30pm Cunard Building

• 3pm – 9pm From Cunard Building to Concourse House, via Water Street, Castle St, Lord St, Parker St, Ranelagh Place

Sunday 7th September

• 3pm – 4pm Concourse House • 7.30pm – 10pm Concourse House to Queensway Tunnel entrance