'Have I told you to leave me alone? Have I? Have I? Yes I f*@kin' have, haven't I. Haven't I? So f*@k off, all right. F*@K OFF.'

The blonde woman shouted the words into her mobile phone as the number 41 bus rumbled through Rusholme. Her fellow passengers gazed out the window, attempting to distract themselves from the woman's rantings by watching pedestrians on the busy street and the early diners eating in Rusholme's numerous curry houses.

However it was impossible not to hear the woman. She moved an over-sized gold hoop earring so she could continue yelling into the phone as her pursuer rang back.

'I'll tell you f*@kin' why, Josh, I'll tell you f*@kin' why, because you are never there for me. Never f**kin' there for me.

'When I collapsed in the house where was yer? Eh? Eh? Down the f*@kin' pub with yer f*@kin' mates getting f*@kin' pissed. Your f*@kin no use to me, no. No, so you can f*@k off. Do you hear me? Do you?

'Exactly what part of "f*@k off" do you not understand? F*@K OFF!'

She snapped the phone shut and shook her head, her heavily lacquered helmet unruffled. I had become fascinated with her hairline by then, where odd hairs were making an escape bid from her scrunchy. Her phone rang again.

'No I'm not telling you where I'm going. No I'm not. And you can chase round after me mates in Sale all you like but I won't be f*@kin there. None of them are going to be smackin yer, if anyone smacks you one it's gonna be me, YOU KNOB.'

The volume at which these final two words were shouted was so loud it genuinely hurt to listen. Could she rival Motorhead for volume? Possibly. She certainly didn't need the phone. If she had just stood in the street and yelled Josh and everyone else in south Manchester would have heard.

We were Withington now. A frail old man hailed the bus which pulled sharply to a halt. The bus driver gave him a fighting chance of getting to a seat before he careered off again up Palatine Road. The old man held grimly onto the rail and levered himself into the seat opposite the woman.

Josh called again. As soon as she started the old man turned to stare with incredulity. Me and what was left of the bus passengers cringed with embarrassment as she started again.

'Send f*@kin' Happy round to talk to me, I don't f*@kin care he's not going to get anywhere. It's finished. over. No I'm not f*@kin' interested. Got that? yes I bet you are but it's too f**kin late. Too f*@kin' late. And no I am not tellin' you.

'Look, where do you think I'm going, I'm eight-and-a-half-months pregnant.'

It was about this point we reached Northenden and I got up. As I passed her, she was, indeed heavily pregnant.

And as I got off I heard her say to the old man 'I do apologise about my language'.

If you drive through my home area of Manchester, Northenden, the view isn't great.

The high street is lined with nail bars, hairdressers, takeaways... all the apparent 'essentials' of modern living.

But if you come down the river paths it's a completely different story.

The church is St Wilfred's. Very pretty.

Just back from lunch with friend Nicky.

I had four-cheese pizza and ice cream.

It is quite likely I will explode at some point this afternoon.

I am stuffed to the gills. Mmmmmm....

I am on the verge of booking a four-foot chocolate fountain for a work event.

Seriously.

Some days this job is not half bad!

It's sunny yet somehow freezing, completely defeating the object of the summer exercise thing. Stop it.

My dress keeps clinging to my tights when I walk, ruining its line and generally flashing more of my legs than I intended. I shall no doubt be moaning about the static shocks later.

The cleaner has left the window of my office open so it's freezing in here as well as out there.

My feet ache from attempting to wear ladylike shoes due to 'that lunch meeting' today.

A bit of my gum is sore so in the back of my mind I'm quietly obsessing that my teeth are going to fall out.

I am cold. Did I mention that?

Meh! Pah! Meh!

Actually... argh!!!!

Working on the ticket barriers at train stations can't be the most fulfilling job in the world.

But there is no excuse for being rude - certainly not at 7am.

There's one ticket man at Bolton who can't see properly and so points at your ticket to help focus his eyes which ruffles my feathers slightly because it looks like he is glaring and, worse, pointing. I do not like being pointed at.

But this morning I got told off at Oxford Road for not going to the right barrier to be let through with my pass.

Now he was something of a dollop so he should have been easy for me to see, I know, but they will insist in dressing them in navy, which makes them virtually invisible against a sea of commuters and it was 7am. I hardly had my eyes open.

I apologised and replied I couldn't see him (and refrained from adding 'inspite of the fact you're carrying far more weight than is healthy, ticket boy.')

But oooh, he's put me in a right mood.

Nibs has been to the library and come back with the Arctic Monkeys' Favourite Worst Nightmare cd.

It's fab. Brainstorm might be familiar. Girls dancing in their gym knickers - marvellous!

The whole cd wallops along. I'm going to be running to this all week. Yay!

Seeing as I've got 'that' lunch meeting on Monday I thought I should probably throw together a cunning plan tonight and go look at some art this afternoon to get the creative brain into gear.

So I toddled down to The Whitworth Gallery to see the Neverland exhibition.

It's all about art inspired by children. The lure for me was the promise of seeing some Paul Klee and Joan Miro's in the flesh, so to speak, and they were beautiful. Stars of that show, though, had to be the artwork created by children towards the end of the exhibition. Really very moving and impressive.

Klee insisted his son, Felix's work, rivalled his and Miro was intent on finding his way back to his childhood creativity. Judging by the work displayed created by two-five year olds they had the right idea, they were really interesting. It's on till August 17 and well worth a visit. Only downside; the echoing screeching of disgruntled small children being forced by their trendy parents to experience art. Take your ipod. I forgot.

Anyway, up stairs was an exhibition by Anne Desmet who I'd never heart of, but she's really impressive. Does all these tiny wood engraving collages. I'm completely smitten with one that's on tiny tiles of green-gold glass called Green Glass Light. I want it in my room. Greatly.

And I loved Tower of Babel, Flowers of Babel and Towers of Babble. On till 3 August.

On Tuesday I went to a Manchester PRs Network Meeting where Peter Saville, Manchester's creative director, was talking on what he's doing for the city and where he's got to since he got the job from the city council.

It took place in Malmaison which I have to say is the darkest hotel I've ever been in and the room we were in did seem to be decorated a la 1980s video.

However, Peter Saville was rather marvellous, I thought. Honest, blunt and absolutely not bothering with any PR-speak. He made some very valid points and I came away thinking of ways I could apply what he had to say to my organisation. If i come away from an event with any new ideas I think it's time well spent, personally. Especially if they are free.

Manchester's position isn't unique. It's working on a problem facing every modern city in the world, just about. For us, in the west, the industrial age is just about over. We're not making, creating and exporting in way like we used to. China's doing that now.

Manchester was the first modern city, according to Peter Saville. Cotton made us kings through the industrial revolution. We had the first railway station and man, you should see The Midland, which was the railway hotel, it's beautiful. Completely over the top and utterly gorgeous.

We have some stunning architecture thanks to that time. You look up at some of the city centre buildings and you can't believe the detailing, the expense, the pride that went into creating them. We were famous the world over.

But now if you leave these shores everyone's heard of Manchester, because of Manchester United. And that's ok, but it's not great. Cities don't thrive on a football club, a football club thireves on being a football club. It's not enough.

Peter Saville was talking about what Manchester needed to do to make itself a great internationally renown city again.

And, not surprisingly, he hadn't come up with a 10-point action plan, a set of performance indicators or any strategic scheme in the time he'd had the job.

Which seemd to ruffle the feathers of the corporates. Who also didn't like being told that their organisations were not the bee's knees when viewed from an international perspective and could do better.

Maybe we've got broader shoulders in our sector, or we're used to more abstract ideas and thinking, I don't know, but if anything spelled out to me that I do not fit their PR mould it was the dummy-spitting emails that flew round the next day.

I was just about to email the organisers and thank them for a stimulating and fascinating couple of hours when I spotted 'where was the agenda? Why was it so hot? Not what I expected. Waste of my precious time' missives to the organisers and everyone else who had been invited.

I sent mine and found the other unis were much of the same view in their 'thanks it was great' emails.

Maybe you lose your sense of humour, your ability to take criticism and your sense of perspective in some organisations.

Still debate is great and if we were all the same it would be a dull planet, but curious how he inspires such extreme reactions.

Changing a city's culture, how it is perceived in the world is going to take life-times. If Peter Saville can point out some cues and get people talking he's well worth the money as far as I can see.

I slept very badly on Thursday night (hardly at all, really) and so got up at 5am on Friday and went into work early so I could finish early, have nice chippie tea and get to bed.

By 9pm I had the light out and I was sleeping soundly. But my imagination was clearly working overtime.

I dreamed I was walking through the countryside somewhere stark naked.

In the dream I was wondering what had happened to my clothes but decided to just keep going - as you do in dreams.

People kept walking by and I thought 'I'm going to get arrested or something eventually' but no one said anything even though they could clearly see me.

And then I woke up. Strange huh? I wasn't anxious in the dream just a bit curious as to what had happened to my clothes.