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.