I WAS chased by The Keystone Cops on Saturday. In fishnets. They were wearing the fishnets, not I. It's an activity I tend to keep to a minimum, frankly, and have never thought it a necessary addition to a good night out.

Still, they ran past me in good cheersoon to be followed by two chickens and a whole ranch full of check-shirted cowboys. I had unwittingly wandered to the heart of Gay Pride and I didn't mind one bit.

The atmosphere was relaxed, the statement positive and I thought it a tremendous testament to a Manchester that has evolved into one of the great liberal cities of the world. A puce haired mock-punk in a tutu laughed at me from the shadows of the Museum of Science and Industry. How surreal life has become.

It was the highlight of a weekend of festivalsnone of which I had wittingly attended. The equally idiosyncratic Creamfields hordes are reviewed elsewhere but not, I sense, the stragglers who I encountered at Birch Service Station on Sunday; post-rave, garishly clad and droopy eyed. I spoke to them over a frappe and they admitted to having failed to catch any of the headline acts at all. It has been, they claimed, the finest year for raves, legal and otherwise, since the heady days of 1989.

A superb two-page article in The Observer would later support this notion. Written by a dear old mucker of mine, Sarah Champion, it chartered an August of rave chasing in the West Country - another activity that will remain forever out of my circle of experience. Indeed, I would rather run through Castlefield in fishnets than prang about in Noddy hats - that is what the girls at Birch were wearingmost fetching too - to the spluttering crack of break-beats.

Like Gay Pride, it's not really my bagbut I am pleased to see such flamboyance thriving in the summer of 2006. The young and young-at-heart, it appears, are bringing an eccentricity back to a country ruled by beige-clad caravannersnow they are the ones who really threaten me. I always look for the tell-tale symbolstissues in the car back window, tartan rugs, boiled sweets in round tins and a tendency to make home-made wine out of used tea bags.

Beware the overtly normal and their obnoxious grandchildrenthey are the ones who take weirdness that one stage too far.

Perhaps the antithesis of rave, certainly aloof in a glorious world of its own and yet managing to attract gushing appraisals from anyone who hovers within earshot - that's the ironically named Modern Times, the hugely anticipated new outing from the Bobness of Zim. In my household, as in so many, the arrival of a new Bob Dylan album ranks alongside a Stockport County FA Cup run in terms of sociological importance.

Trends can spin and twist around the world and Bob remains affected only by underlying global passions, allowing them to filter into his unprecedented lyricism. No other lyric writer alive holds the ability to trivialise and profound to such a spiritually warming effect.

Modern Times arrives after a two-album return to form, with 1997's Time Out of Mind and 2000's Love and Theft, the former being my all-time favourite album. The themes inherent in both albums - growing old without losing that aesthetic awareness (see Not Dark Yet on Time Out of Mind, arguably the greatest anthem to the ravages of time ever recorded) are profoundly visible in Modern Times. Throughout which, Dylan spills his word-barrage. The difference here is that, given the ability of his long-lasting band to thump and swing to his every whim, we find a greater sense of musical clarity. In fact, this is possibly Dylan's greatest musical' moment and, cranked up really high on the car stereo, Modern Times makes a powerful jazz-tinged alternative to contemporary beats. There are many golden moments here, with equally top ranking going to Workingman's Blues 2 and Ain't Talkin', which see Dylan adopt a blue-collar vision that hasn't been apparent for some time. Both are stacked with anecdotes carved from fiscal desperation. How could Dylan know about such things? However, as in the old fave Tangled Up In Blue, he weaves believable and vividly intricate vignettes of times down and dirty. To be honest, three plays in, I've not lived with it long enough to discover whether it holds the longevity of his previous outings but the signs are good.

Just one downer: A song entitled Rollin' and Tumblin'. There have been many songs bearing this title over the yearsall are identical. All are doused in a sexual innuendo borrowed from the blues. One wonders how the greatest writer of the past 50 years could have become initially excited by the concept of such a song. It's a minor point and shouldn't detract too heavily from an album of pure luminous intelligence.