SOMETIMES we should paint the town red and plenty of other colours, too. This thought struck me at 11pm last Sunday. I was standing in Bordeaux at the time. The grand building in front of me was all lit up. Maybe I was a bit lit up as well. That’s what happens at a wine festival.

It was hot and dark. Hundreds of people of all ages were gathered to watch the illumination, maybe thousands. The waterfront building turned into a riotous, madly colourful history of wine. Bunches of grapes bloomed, wine poured, Bacchus loomed, that sort of thing.

All very well done, but it was what happened next that lodged in my wine-soggy brain. Show over – and, yes, it did go on a bit – the crowd cheered and clapped, and then turned from the now-dark building to face the wide River Garonne. That’s when the fireworks started, and the sky’s dark canvas was splashed and zigzagged with the brightest and best display imaginable.

York could do with a bit of this, I thought at the time. We’ve had the illuminations, some French bloke, wasn’t it? Lit up York Minster.

Back in the office two days later, a library search brought up the name: Patrice Warrener. He was the one who turned the Minster into a giant Gothic jukebox. The year was 2005 and it was the first Illuminating York Festival. It was fantastic and there were even fireworks as well, and you don’t often get those in York.

Subsequent years have seen the Yorkshire Museum and St Mary’s Abbey digitally repainted to astonishing effect, while the Tudor walls of King’s Manor displayed artwork based on the night-time wildlife in the adjacent Museum Gardens.

So York has a handle on what the French do so well, and with luck the city will continue to stage such uplifting and surprising events. We could certainly do with them.

Back in Bordeaux, I was thinking: what a great use of public space. All these people, all ages, all having fun. A public space can just be somewhere you pass through each day without noticing much. Or it can become a place for people to stand and watch, to congregate in the cause of public enjoyment, to discover something or other. Or just have fun.

We don’t always handle fun well in this city. Someone would be bound to complain. There was loud music in Bordeaux to accompany the fireworks. You can see the pens poised already at the prospect of such a joyfully cacophonous display here.

While we have learned a trick or two from the French, there is more we could do. Even in the gloomy age of Cameron, there should still be public enjoyment. Unless that’s had VAT slapped on it as well.

York seems to have a policy of staging a baggy collection of festivals at various times of the year. The food and drink one is popular, assorted music festivals have their supporters. Illuminating York, as suggested, certainly has mine.

But something is missing in all this. We need a proper festival, a big, well-planned event, just like the one in Bordeaux. Fireworks would be good, everyone likes them. How about a real display in honour of Guy Fawkes, that incendiary old boy of this city? It could chime with Illuminating York, for fireworks certainly do that. A festival could bring together the two forms of illumination, with other events slipped in as well.

Then there are the York Mystery Plays, staged so sporadically. They should be put on every two years, with an accompanying knees-up. The whole city could be turned into a festival of mystery. The biggest mystery about these plays is why they are put on so rarely in York.

Oh well, I suppose we could have a festival of grumbles instead. Or a Moaning About Cyclists week – although, in truth, that dreary chorus rises on any week you might care to mention.