Psychology Social, Valentines, Social MCR - Get Involved

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Busy week on the psychology front for me. I’ve a ton of meetings to do with memory and mental health, featuring different public services, some parts of which I’ll share here if I think it will help others, other parts I won’t. 

I’ve revived my Manchester Psychology Social Group. If you fancy some science chat with vegan food in a non-alcohol atmosphere, come down to Hinterland in the Northern Quarter on Thursday, 6:30pm. I’ve switched days and made it a little earlier as that seemed to be the issue with attendance previously. I have loads of ideas for the group – things I want to ask people, ideas we can try, etc. etc. If you want some tasty vegan grub and engaging psychology chat, please get involved. 

Valentines Day is Friday. I’m at some kind of singles mingles night. Don’t buy a hat just yet, but who knows. I’m more than likely just going to use it as an attempt to recruit people to my meetup events. 

A member of Manchester Nightlife, my Meetup group, pointed me in the direction of Social MCR, an online social community that have met in person once so far. I wasn’t there at the time as I was running my own meetup, but I’m planning to join them on another outing soon. There’s an event planned at Point Blank, the shooting range on Deansgate, on 27th February. But there’ll doubtlessly be other things before then. I’d signed up through the site and was dropped into an introductory WhatsApp chat in which the rules and structure of the group were explained. Then I had the option to join different chats like Unfiltered (edgy humour), TV and Film, Event Suggestions (where we can chime in with our own ideas) Gym and Fitness and Food & Drink. 

Chats have been going reasonably well on these groups, but today the organisers have decided to move the discussions over to Discord, which as I understand is kinda a blend of WhatsApp and Reddit, allowing for discussions to take place like a tree diagram, with different replies stemming off from other replies. I’m getting my head around it. There is a Bongo’s Bingo night planned but it’s already sold out. 

There are other nights. 

Also, on the blog: a book review, a writing exercise and a recipe review.

Pizza in Circle Square, Brassic Filming in Chinatown, House Music in Ashton

. @weroad_official social in Taphouse Symphony Square #Manchester Friday. Can't say no to free pizza. This area used to be the BBC building. So different to 20 years ago pic.twitter.com/mIbo5wZ4wt

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) February 9, 2025

 

Went to the WeRoad social (event organised by the international backpacking brand) in Manchester Friday night. Taphouse in Symphony Park played host, serving up giant margarita pizzas (that were quickly demolished by the famished guests, including myself). Nice bar, automated serving system was a bit complicated though if all you want is a soft drink. Dished out a few blog cards, promoted my own meetup groups. 

Followed a subset group to the nearby Revolution then called it a night. 

Had a stroll around town. Found a film set: the latest series of Brassic was under way on George St in Chinatown. 

 

More Brassic filming in Manchester tonight pic.twitter.com/qhlNe8vNbe

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) February 8, 2025

 

Saturday night: Ran a Manchester Nightlife meetup to Ashton, in particular Nico Ditch, for Connect, a night of house music. My good friend Paul Smith was DJing with a few others. Small venue, but we packed out. Friendly faces everywhere. One attendee came out – great to introduce her to people. 

 

Connect. House music night in Nico Ditch Ashton Under Lyne last night. Great vibes pic.twitter.com/dS4JeJGasT

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) February 9, 2025

 

Finally got around to trying the local steakhouse, The Edge. Great food tonight. 

 

#Veganuary is long over. Finally got to the new steakhouse near me, The Edge. Took the parents. My treat. My order: 10oz ribeye, whisky sour, beef dripping chips, garlic and herb butter, cinnamon churros with Nutella sauce. pic.twitter.com/RUBWOXHcnC

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) February 9, 2025

 

A busy week. Glad things are - literally and figuratively – warming up.

Black Pepper Fennel Prawns

From Rukmini Iyer’s India Express: South Indian-Style Black Pepper & Fennel Prawns. 

I used dried coriander and ginger, not fresh. I’d never get through it all otherwise. I thought I had cumin seeds. Seems not. Well, I’ve subsequently bought some. Ground cumin sufficed. Should have taken 30 mins, took me 42. 

It came out very spicy, but that’s how I like it.

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Food is on the agenda this week.

Food and house music. And more. Now Veganuary is over, and I’m not hammering the chin-ups so much, I’m mixing in a few other events to brighten up my routine. You might want to get involved too. Here we go… 

Tuesday night: a new writers group opens at Oldham Library. Not sure if it has a defined name yet. I’m gonna take a look.

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I’m going for a steak with the family Wednesday night. 

Friday night: free pizza at the WeRoad social. The Taphouse in Symphony Park holds host to the Meetup, out on Oxford Road where the BBC used to be. A great chance to meet new people, eat, try new bars. The WeRoad brand is popular with backpacker types travelling the world. I’m going to dish out some blog cards. Try to recruit people for my own Meetups.

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Saturday night: a good friend of mine is DJing in Nico Ditch in Ashton. Join the Manchester Nightlife Meetup for Connect, a night of house music in a different venue out of the city. Expect electronica, friendly vibes, low priced ales and a slightly more matured, chilled crowd.

Veganuary: Complete!

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I love a good monthly challenge. In January I had a go at Veganuary, a month of veganism. No meat, fish, or dairy products. The aims: 

 • get down to 72.2kg and fit back into my suit trousers

 • beat overhand chin-up record • beat underhand chin-up record 

 • beat dips record

 • beat my record for my local 5.4km running route I started the month at 79kg. 

After a month of following vegan recipes, I ended at 73.4. If I’d have just eaten a little less bread, maybe I’d have hit the target. A little less fruit. A little more water. I dunno. 

Anyway, it’s over and I’ve already treated myself to some non-vegan food. Feels good. I worked on the above targets. At the start of the month I tried each of the exercises and made notes of my achievements that time, then spent the month improving on them and trying to get closer to the PBs. I was getting somewhere, but just didn’t get close enough. 

That said, I’ve had bags of energy and sleep has been reasonably okay. The gym classes I’ve done have gone well, and I’ve felt strong and always had enough gas in the tank, so to speak. I attend a local pump class, in which we load up a bar with weights and do a lot of squats, lunges, bench press and bent over rows in time to music. I can load the bar stupidly heavy now – 3 5kg places plus a 2.5kg plate at each end of the bar for the squat track. I’m the strongest member of the class now. 

I tried a few vegan alternatives. Instead of drinking chocolate and cow’s milk, I had cocoa and oat milk. Grim. Tesco’s coconut milk was nice as a drink. Their soya yoghurt tasted like shit. Alpro’s coconut yoghurt didn’t hit the mark. 

Lots of potato and sweet potato made the month more enjoyable. The naan breads and ketchup may have cost me my weight target, though. I have a backlog of vegan recipe reviews, ready to be uploaded on upcoming Saturdays. They were interesting meals, but not favourites. 

And this is what Veganuary has been like: okay. Not exciting. Some of the recipes I followed – in Rukmini Iyer’s The Green Roasting Tin – were pleasant enough, but not that fulfilling. I just love meat. It’s my downfall. I probably won’t go full vegan again, but I will try to throw in a vegan recipe every now and then. 

Yesterday - 1st February – Veganuary was over. I had a halloumi wrap and a ton of B&M chocolate. Then I got drunk, as I’d also partook in Dry January too. No point doing Veganuary for health reasons if you’re drinking too. Staying off alcohol wasn’t anywhere near as hard as avoiding meat, fish and dairy. But even that wasn’t so difficult once you got into the swing of it. 

I’m glad a gave it a shot. You should too.

Absolute chaos in the news this week.

After overthrowing the Tories last July, Labour have decided…. To push ahead with disability benefit reforms. 

In particular, claimants with mental health problems are the most likely to see their benefits cut. Midlands shitrag Birmingham Live are now seemingly claiming that people are getting disability benefits for mental health conditions that they themselves have diagnosed… using TikTok videos. 

No, it does not work like that. You need to be assessed and diagnosed by a qualified psychologist or suchlike, hand over your psych assessment, sit a private assessment (that will usually be ran by someone in a different medical field) and find that in their 15 minutes with you they’ve contradicted everything that was written in your assessment that took WEEKS of sessions to compile. 

So, not only is the new government still fighting against us, but a good portion of the press is too. 

The government were warned these reforms would harm. Both governments. The Tories also decided to sit on a critical PIP report, just days before publishing a brutal green paper on the subject a year ago. Their plan at the time, which thankfully wasn’t enacted, was to replace PIP with supermarket vouchers - of course, Tory donor supermarkets only. 

Instead of taxing the 166 billionaires in the country – people who have amassed £1 million a THOUSAND times over, EACH… Labour decided to punch down at the most vulnerable in society. 

Cheers. 

I’m on the verge of writing to my MP about this, although what good it will do I don’t know. You overthrow one tyrant, only to have another – seemingly worse – one take his place. It’s Animal Farm all over again. 

The Public Accounts Committee – which examines the value for money of government projects - described the Department of Work and Pensions‘ treatment of disability benefits claimants as “unacceptably poor”. They were warned these reforms would be ‘devastating,’ yet Labour are going ahead with it anyway. 

What a way to stab your voters in the back. 

I got my job through the Workstep scheme, a now defunct employment programme for people with disabilities. The job, which I secured in 2007, has always been part time admin. They’re good public sector employers, but the wage just does not cover the bills. Disability benefits are a lifeline for me. If these plans go ahead, I don’t know what I’m going to do. I sure as shit couldn’t afford to run Meetups. The site is expensive if you want to be an organiser. That’s 3 Meetup groups - entire social circles, for many people – nuked. Plus a life as a hermit for me. 

So what do you do? I’m not going to just sit here and aggregate news articles. I’m working with Social Prescribing to see what, if anything, I can do. 

Beyond that, I’ll just have to see what happens.

Last Week of Veganuary

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5 more days of vegan food. Tons of recipes to go up on the blog. 

TV / movie actor Tait Fletcher like my pic of him. 

It’s about time I got the ball rolling again with Meetup events. I’ve revived the long-neglected Manchester Psychology Social Group for another night of vegan food and psych chat. On Wednesday night we’re meeting in Hinterland for some Wholesome Junkies grub and discussions on books, courses, confidence building, mental health and all other things psychology. I particularly want to ask the group their thoughts on something from my past, that I’ve mentioned in the discussions tab on the meetup page. 

Things are moving forward with Social Prescribing, who are helping me with finding social groups, employment, and the benefits system. I have another appointment on Thursday. 

Saturday night, 1st February: Veganuary is over. It’s time for food. I’ve set up a meetup with Manchester Nightlife to try out Mackie Mayor, the food hall in the Northern Quarter offering food from independent outlets of many cultures and a huge dining space. I’m looking forward to some solid meat and alcohol, 2 things I’ve had none of in the last month. We’re starting with cocktails in Stray bar at 7pm. Get involved! 

Meetup isn’t the only platform bringing communities together. A Meetup friend of mine introduced me to Manchester_Social, a group on the platform Reddit. It’s ‘a community for Mancunians that want to meet new people, attend events with new faces & build fresh connections with others residing in Greater Manchester.’ I joined last night, and have followed a link to a WhatsApp group chat. I’ve answered a few preliminary questions, as per their rules, and I’ve joined a few different chat topics: ‘Books, Poems and Everything Lit,’ ‘General Chat’ and ‘Event Suggestions.’ There are plenty of others. I’m hoping we’ll start meeting face to face soon. 

Looking forward to a steak, more than anything.

Bulgur Wheat

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I cooked Bulgur Wheat with Roasted Peppers, Tomatoes, Feta and Pine Nuts on 22nd October, then completely forgot to write it up. I think I stumbled across a reminder in my phone when trawling through the OmniNotes app, which – usually – I use effectively for storing information. I wrote it up on the 7th November with Teeline notes from a notebook. 

From Rukmini Iyer’s The Roasting Tin, this was a pretty simple recipe to follow, although I put the pine nuts in a little too early. It all seemed to go together well though. Tasted nice. The only issue I had was my own doing: this recipe is printed on the right hand page, with a different recipe on the left. This particular double page spread features just the text of the recipes, with no pictures (these are on other pages). I kept glancing at the wrong recipe, thinking, did I even buy that ingredient? Eventually I had to drape a tea towel over the irrelevant page to stay focussed. 

This is my life. End result worked out well.

Another Accurate Social Media Prediction

So yes, proven rapist and convicted insurrectionist Donald Trump in inaugurated at 5pm GMT today. I’m likely to have the Stupidest Day of my Lifetime in American History on my TV in the background. All on Blue Monday too, the Most Depressing Day of the Year. 

Right. 

TikTok’s future in the US looks shaky. I had predicted in 2020 that Instagram Reels would flatten TikTok: looks like it’s US Policy that’s going to cause it the most harm. That said, Instagram has half a billion more users. 

I will start running Meetups again soon with Manchester Nightlife and Manchester Psychology Social Group.

 

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Veganuary Home Stretch

2/3rds through Veganuary. Going strong. Weight steadily coming off. 

Spoke to Gabby Dawn Allen off Love Island All Stars about anatomy and fashion. Accept the cringe.

I met her in the Freda Funk launch in Manchester 2018. 

Passed 1.2 Million hits on the blog. Thanks for reading!

Padmini’s Tomato, Onion and Spinach Curry

I returned to Rukmini Iyer’s India Express book this time for a simple vegan curry recipe. 

My spinach bag was a lot smaller than recommended, but it was that or make it outrageously spinach-y with 2 bags. Perhaps I should have done that. As a result, it made only 2 meals, not the suggested 4. Suggested time was 30 mins, took me 45. 

Tasted good though.

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WeRoad in Foundry Project, Ring Girl Calamity

Veganuary going well. All a bit bland, but the cooking blog posts are stacking up. I’ve scouted out a few vegan city-centre restaurants that I’m planning to try out. 

Went to a WeRoad Meetup Friday night in The Northern Quarter’s Foundry Project. A few familiar faces. Good people, but the whole concept of WeRoad needs to be something more than just a bunch of people (mostly male backpackers) in a bar introducing themselves to each other. They also need better acoustics for when people are giving speeches on the mic. Foundry was a good choice though. 

Oh, also, remember that ring girl that went viral after her appearance at Mike Tyson vs Jake Paul back in November? Well, I made the error of correcting Lexi Williams’ spelling. She appears to have blocked me.

The hot ring girl from the Tyson v Paul fight just clapped back 😵 pic.twitter.com/Kw2mUojqJl

— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matthewtuckey) January 8, 2025

Is Social Prescribing for You?

Rather than rest on my laurels, I hit the ground running in January and tried to figure out whether there was anything I could do to improve my work and financial situation. 

Some time ago, I was awarded Universal Credit for 12 months. That expired a few months ago, so my income dropped dramatically, AND I now have to shell out for prescriptions, eye tests and dental treatment as PIP doesn’t cover that. I’m no longer eligible for a concessionary travel pass as I’m not under the Learning Disability Team at the Local Authority – a stipulation that came into force in 2021 (and was never publicised) – and I’m not currently under any therapist or any other NHS specialist. 

So, what do I do? 

I managed to get forwarded to NHS Social Prescribing, ‘an approach that connects people to activities, groups, and services in their community to meet the practical, social and emotional needs that affect their health and wellbeing.’ They booked me in for a meeting on the 9th, last Thursday. Welfare Rights were also supposed to call me on the 8th. That never happened. 

The 9th rolled around and I met with LC who worked at Social Prescribing; she asked where I was up to in life. We discussed head injuries, memory difficulties, qualifications, work, previous therapies, mental health, physical health (Veganuary is having a few positive effects on me) and plans for my future. 

We also chatted about the NHS’s Silvercloud online mental health programme, something I’m tapping through at the moment. I’ll blog more on this another time. 

I’m being put in touch with other people who should be able to help. LC will chase up Welfare Rights for me. 

I’ll update the blog on Social Prescribing probably in 2 weeks.

New year off to a good start.

Got an insta comment off Audrey Reid. Do you agree with the Breaking Bad comparison? 

Family gathering on Saturday last week. Here’s what I got in Secret Santa:

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Looking forward to a tipple but it’ll have to be February. Veganuary going well.

Roasted Aubergine

I wrote this in November. I'm putting up recipe reviews in the order I cooked and wrote them. 

 

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Enjoyed this recipe from Rukmini Iyer’s The Roasting Tin. Prep time should have been 15 mins; took me 30. My halloumi packet came in 25g lighter than recommended, but it was still the outstanding element of the meal. 

How am I going to cope in Veganuary when I can’t have any dairy or meat?!