At 7am in the morning buses are very quiet places.

So the chirpie Scot was all the more remarkable as he bounced onto the 43 yesterday in West Didsbury looking like an explosion in a Julian Cope costume shop.

"Are you ready for the sun?" he asked the man wearing mirrored aviators whose face didn't suggest he was up for chit-chat. "Amazing isn't it. All this good weather. Four days in a row you know.

"Someone's dropped a bollock."

Clearly getting nowhere with Mr Aviators he announced to his captive audeince that there were too many good looking men down stairs and he was going upstairs.

Mostly people got on with reading their books and Metros and musing over Amy Winehouse's latest late-night run in with the paps and how anyone who is slowly morphing into a scraggy old horse can possibly live much longer, never mind support that rats nest on top of her head.

Poor lamb, it seems to be growing by the day. The girl who washes my hair at the hairdressers' reckons she keeps her drugs in there. I said I thought it was a refuge for snowy owls and red squirrels.

Right - I'm rambling. I've been for my run - glorious day that it is, I've scoffed my porridge and I'm going to check out Something for the Weekend before I scrub the mud and midges off me.

Looks like it's going to be a beautiful weekend - let's have fun out there - and Happy Birthday, Soy!