Come to Flight Club and Hinterland this week

 

No quiet January this time: the first full week of the year I’ve already got 3 meetups lined up. 

Wednesday night: Hinterland’s monthly journal club returns for a night of writing prompts. I’ve put that on Manc Mates meetup to see if anyone there has the writing bug. 

GetSocial hosts a games night in darts venue Flight Club, promising: 

🎯 4 hours of unlimited interactive Darts across 3 Oches 

🍸 Private area booked just for us 

🎉 A night packed with games, great vibes & amazing people 

Thursday, 7-11pm. There’s a WhatsApp group for the Meetup group too. Find it on the site. 

As Dry January and Veganuary are in full swing, I figured an ideal meetup would be to Hinterland again, this time for vegan food and alcohol free drinks. Saturday night from 7pm we’re doing things a little different to other Manchester Nightlife meetups. There are 4 of us so far. Make it 5!

New Year meetup in Rewind

Bringing in 2026 in Manchester's Rewind bar with Getsocial #meetup group

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— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) January 4, 2026 at 8:02 PM

Here we are. 2026. After a year and a half of running meetups… I had no one to go out with on New Years Eve. I didn’t get anything booked in with my own groups. What a clusterfuck. 

GetSocial Meetup group ran a night in Rewind, so I got a ticket on the door at 9:30pm and found a few familiar faces, at least 4 of which I made a conscious effort to swerve. I’m pretty sure they did the same thing. Lookalikes on the night included Republican strategist Steve Bannon, Claes Bang (Filnjor off The Northman), Michael Sheen (Frost in Frost/Nixon), Karl off Die Hard (Alexander Godunov) and a gay version of Goose off Top Gun (Anthony Edwards). All fairly predictable. 75% guys. Cheesy pop. Polite chat with this person and that. Left not long after 12. 

A lot of these middle-of-the-road meetups would do much better if they had a bit more structure: things happening, maybe a raffle, a limbo challenge or a dance-off or something. It needs to be more than just ‘people in a room.’ 

I also thought maybe the organisers could put up some topic signs like ‘music,’ fitness,’ ‘films,’ etc. that way if you’re into a particular thing, go hover around that sign and the likelihood is someone will want to talk to you about your interests.

At least my meetups are held in places where a lot of people would say, ‘no, actually, that’s not my thing.’ That way you can narrow down the people you’d get on with best. 

Veganuary holding steady. Trying different culinary things. Got an immediate headache Friday night after a vegan curry and have done no exercise all weekend. Probably dehydrated. Was fine by the middle of Saturday.

Veganuary 2026

January is less than 12 hours away and Veganuary begins at midnight: one month of veganism. No meat or dairy products. 

I did this last year, resulting in some fitness gains. I’ve probably eaten more veg over the rest of 2025 than in any other year since moving out in 2010 too, so it seems to have had an effect on me. 

This time, I’m doing Veganuary again but will also cut down on the grains: the bread, the porridge. The emphasis will be on vegetables and recipes. I currently weigh 80.5kg, way too much. 72.2 is the goal. A few 5km runs, pump and circuit classes, vegan recipes and soups should set me in good stead. Furthermore, I’m going to set up the chinup bar again and see if I can beat some old records: 170 dips, 20 underhand chinups, 23 overhand chinups. I also want to try a few vegan restaurants, so expect meetups held in that kind of place. As the emphasis is health and fitness, I’ll be doing dry January too. No alcohol for a month. 

You know who else is doing Veganuary? Private Joker from Full Metal Jacket, or Matthew Modine!

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House Music in Renae

This week music producer Klaas – of Infinity 2008 fame – liked an Instagram story of mine criticising a spelling mistake in Netflix’s Joshua v Paul boxing match. One of the title cards had ‘Exihibition’ written on the screen. How he found this particular upload I have no idea. 

Great Christmas so far. Family gatherings going well. 

Finally visited new club Renae last night. A Love From Outer Space after party featured chilled electronica and welcoming environment. The sold out main event took place in the afternoon in The Yard, but later on the DJs gathered again in the new, homely venue on Thomas St. Lookalikes on the night included Neil DeGrasse Tyson and Harvey Keitel in Taxi Driver (long hair and wide brimmed hat).

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Ghonto

My first attempt at this veg curry went south right from the supermarket when I had an apparent brainfart and mistook a cauliflower for a cabbage. I thought I knew better. Here we are. 

This recipe is from Rukmini Iyer's India Express, full of mostly veggie Bengali dishes. I decided it would be good to bring the ingredients to my mum’s house and cook it there with her, to see if my prep and cook times might match what was suggested in the recipe. Sometimes cooking alone with memory difficulties means taking a break to let my brain calm down, and not allow myself to get overwhelmed, which then leaves me wondering where I was up to in the process. With someone else chipping in as well, it took the load off. 

I seemed to only have ground cumin and not the seeds, but thankfully my mum had the supply. How these things evade me when there is a literal plan to write out the ingredients in my phone every Thursday, I don’t know. To make things simpler, we used garam masala that was premixed, so we didn’t have to fiddle about with cloves, cumin seeds and cardamom pods. It was supposed to serve 6 people, but our version only seemed to amount to 3 platefuls. We’re not particularly big eaters, so I don’t know how that happened. 

Took an hour total. It ended up quite a dry dish, so we added in some yoghurt and mango chutney. But it tasted okay considering there was no meat. 

I felt it was necessary to try again with an actual cabbage, this time without assistance. I swapped out peas for mixed veg and regular cardamom pods for black, but after an hour and 20 of cooking, it was ready. So, slower alone. 

It tasted… okay.

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A Love from Outer Space

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Well, here it is. Christmas week. I need to wrap, but ready otherwise. 

This week, house music fans have a prime opportunity to to be welcomed into one of the most exclusive venues in Manchester for a free but limited entry night with A Love from Outer Space. The curation of DJs and the music event itself starts in the middle of the day in an outdoor venue, but that has long sold out. The after party, held in the luxurious Renae club in the Northern Quarter, promises more great music from skilled house music DJs, including my friend Toni Key. 

Meetup group Manchester Nightlife are already poised to go. It’s free entry, first come first serve, and they’ll turn away once they hit capacity, so let’s get there early. Meeting at 10 in Foundry Project nearby, we’ll set off not long after that.

Maryam Moshini / Hype/Drive

Bought a new computer. Haven’t set it up yet so still using this hulking mechanism that takes an hour to upload a simple blog post. Completed my Christmas shopping early on this year. Saw the Hype/Drive lot DJing in Browtons in Ashton. Small venue, good crowd. BBC News’ Maryam Moshini liked my comment about lookalikes. (She was the presenter who, in December ‘23, accidentally gave the finger to the whole country and went viral for it.) 

 

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