Thai Food in Muay Thai Tapas This Saturday

On the blog this week: 

A write-up of an incredible convention in Liverpool with some Back to the Future guests. 

More updates on this Excess Project that isn’t doing my health any good. Not great when you're on camera. I’m on leave today to get on top of it all. 

I’m going to make another attempt to get this Psychology Social Group moving, this time in Egg & Co on Deansgate, for a chat about psychology books. Thursday night, 6pm. I just want to make new friends and connections away from the bar and club scene. It’s been hard work finding a place that opens in the evenings, doesn’t serve alcohol or junk food, has the space to seat us, and isn’t involved in some horrific practice in the Middle East. This egg-based restaurant seems to do the trick. 5 attendees so far. 

Saturday night: Do you like Thai food? Do you want to get drunk while eating it? Or at least have a drink? Come join Manchester Nightlife to Muay Thai Tapas, a new Thai eatery nestled in Ancoats. Spices, cocktails, good chat and maybe a few other Ancoats bars after – that’s the plan for this week’s night out. Come try it. 7pm, Blossom St. 5 of us are coming as of now. 

And now… to blog.

Journal Club: The Space Between

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I missed the last of Hinterland’s Journaling Club nights because it clashed with the recent solar eclipse – I’d seen that from Hartshead on the Oldham / Ashton border. This time, on the 23rd, I got some food and got seated, just about. Popular event. The theme this time: 

THE SPACE BETWEEN 

Organiser Fi asks the group, when an event happens, what do I do before I react? What occurs in that space? The first writing prompt of the night: 

WHEN I HAVE TO WAIT, I FEEL  

Usually impatient. I’m not a good waiting person. My normal reaction to these times is, ‘can I use this time to my advantage? Can I read? Write? Or am I going to reach for my phone as per?’ Why do I feel this discomfort with inaction? I’ve wasted so much time on the internet over the years, why do I have this horrible feeling of life slipping away from me? Just because I have to wait and have nothing to keep me busy? Also, why am I forgetting how to chew? I’ve nearly choked about 8 times this week. 

- 

Next up, a discussion and a few pointers on the board: 

• Culture of immediacy 

• Speed = value? 

•  Waiting as an active process 

• Something happens [gap] response 

• Space                 

• Not avoidance 

Next, a 6-minute prompt: 

‘THE SPACE BETWEEN FEELING SOMETHING AND ACTING ON IT IS…’  

In that space, what kicks into effect is known as ‘inner game.’ Inner game is like your metaphorical ‘engine under the hood,’ your psychology, your ability to regulate your own emotions, act on them. Will you steady your breath, pause, analyse the situation and deal with it in an appropriate manner? Sometimes, responding immediately can mean you react angrily, based on emotion, lacking critical thinking. But other times, you can pause, plan to speak up properly about someone’s behaviour, but then end up putting it off, stewing on it. Where’s the middle ground for this? 

Am I starting to sound like The Log Lady from Twin Peaks? 

- 

Next up on the board, the title: 

SPACE IS VALUE 

Under this, a list of prompt words. 

NOW 

DISTANCE 

MOMENT 

STILL

HOLD 

SOON 

LATER 

ECHO 

CREATE 

EVENTUALLY 

SEASON 

HESITATE 

PAUSE 

In a 10 minute burst, we wrote something with these words as prompts, on the theme of ‘Space is Value.’ I decided to make it extra difficult for myself and put it into rhyme.  

Pen to paper, words, they form fast 

Space is value, forming a contrast 

A month of excess, time is all filled, 

But now in the moment, pause and fall still 

Pen to the pad, now a time to create 

No time in this vegan café to hesitate 

Alcohol-free night, reprieve for the liver 

Between all the lines, inspiration delivers 

Breathe, retrieve words mentally 

Sentences form on the page eventually 

- 

And that is as far as I got in the time we had. I read it out to the group; they seemed to like it. 

Great to be back at Hinterland’s events. I’ve missed being creative, and I’ve missed their food too. I also listed the event on the Manc Mates meetup group and got a couple of attendees. No confirmation if they were at the actual event. 

Journal Club is back on the 14th.

Journal Club, Comic Con NE, Lee Child in Todmorden

A lot of travel this week. 

Wednesday: Journal Club returns to Hinterland in the Northern Quarter for a night of writing. There’s usually prompts, with 10 minute writing bursts and the opportunity to share your writing with the group. Meetup group Manc Mates are attending – there’s 2 of us at the time of writing. Hinterland is a great, cosy restaurant serving vegan food, no alcohol and a quiet atmosphere. The antidote to today’s hectic Manchester environment. 

I’ll be starting a new month-long project on Saturday that should keep me very busy. And drunk. 

But before the alcohol consumption begins… a trip up north to Newcastle for a Monopoly Events convention. Comic Con North East sees a range of TV and movie stars fly in, including Alan Ford, or Brick Top from Snatch. That’s who I’ll be meeting.

I’ll probably have a wander around the city too afterwards. Amazing place. 

Todmorden Book Festival starts Friday with Jack Reacher creator Lee Child opening the proceedings at the town’s Hippodrome. Intriguing. It all seems to go downhill from there with a roster of obscurities, the only other anomaly being former Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, which has raised a few eyebrows over socials. I work in healthcare AND I have a disability. I don’t remember his policies helping me or my clients. Quite the opposite, in fact. 

But yes. Newcastle will be awesome.

Weirdness at Nostalgic Oldham

 

Highlight of this week has been not starving into oblivion on that ridiculous Machinist Diet that ended Tuesday – but as a result I’ve already put on 4kg. 

Wednesday I tried to get to the launch of Clean Greens health food spot on Deansgate, but they’d ran out of food and were closing for a few hours while they restocked. I was starving, so went next door to Egg & Co for an egg sandwich. Simple. Fantastic.

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Saturday: a day of retro entertainment in Parliament Square with Nostalgic Oldham, featuring a cross dressing nun, classic cars, steam engines and Morris men. Funnier and more interesting than I had expected tbf. 

 

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Last Day of this Machinist Diet.

I cannot wait for this ridiculous, painful fasting experiment to be over. Yes, it’s self-inflicted. Yes, I’ve lost *some* weight. But no, it has not been fun. More later. But at least Monday’s my rest day, so I’m not staggering about with a skipping rope trying to understand Twin Peaks, which has made up most of the time of the project. 

I’m on leave today to catch up with a ton of blogging. Expect also a write-up of Sheffield Comic Con yesterday with a certain British sci-fi celebrity, a sci-fi book review and a bar and restaurant review. 

Wednesday night: Manchester holds host to former White House Communications Director Anthony ‘The Mooch’ Scaramucci on his All the Wrong Moves book tour. Scaramucci famously lasted 10 days as Trump’s comms guy before being unceremoniously sacked, after which he turned on his former boss, speaking out against many of his policies. Tickets, including a copy of the book, are £40. As for the event, there’s definitely a Q+A. No word yet of if there are photo ops or signings with it. I’m still undecided. 

Thursday: Ryan Murphy’s latest Monster series drops on Netflix, this time covering Lizzie Borden, who I understand may or may not have hacked her parents to death in Massachusetts in 1892. Murphy’s previous Monster instalments have frequently been intriguing, violent and fun, but scattered and repetitive. 

There was a Lizzie movie that came out some years ago with Chloë Sevigny in the title role. I never got around to that. 

Saturday: retro entertainment day Nostalgic Oldham arrives in Parliament Square in the town centre, with classic cars, circus entertainers and the official unveiling of a huge community-created mural. I’m intrigued by the cars. 11am-4pm. 

Saturday night: Manchester Nightlife this time tries out the new Dahlia Stereo, the food and house music venue in The Northern Quarter. Last weekend saw their first Saturday Night, and the Insta story looks fantastic – great music, a real club atmos, and even branded t shirts are available. 8pm, Lever St.

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My Patience with Meetup People is at an All-Time Low.

Friday night: ran a meetup with Manchester Nightlife to Blinker, the new cocktail bar near Parsonage Gardens. Had 2 attendees listed. Got down there on time, waited. Nice bar. Good décor and atmos with funk music. Cocktails £12-13, mostly, although I wasn’t drinking. Got evacuated due to a suspected gas leak. 3 fire engines, an ambulance and an ambulance car later, and we were allowed back in. No apparent injuries.

Waited til 10. Nobody from Meetup showed. The 2 other attendees, 1 a regular, the other not a first timer but I hadn’t seen her in ages, neither got back to me. I really should block them both from the group. 

You might be asking… why do you do it? Why do you pay to run this group just to have to deal with a load of disorganised flakes, racists, homophobes, ablists and general social dunces? 

The answer is, I’m 44. Everyone else I know is married and settled. They don’t do anything any more. And I don’t want to go join ANOTHER dance group or writer’s group only to find there’s nobody there I click with either. And there are things I want to do in the city.

In other news, I discussed Weetabix with Paralympic tae kwon do champion Matt Bush.

Then I went to a Comic Con. More on that later.

Meet Red Dwarf's The Cat; Blinker Bar Meetup

Highlights of this coming week: 

Friday: Early meetup with Manchester Nightlife, this time to new Blinker bar which I hear is highly recommended. Friday night, right in the middle of the financial area off Fountain St. 9pm. 

Sunday: Sheffield Comic Con lands Sunday at Ponds Forge Sports Centre with Danny John Jules the guest attraction. DJJ played The Cat in Brit SF comedy Red Dwarf, a well-groomed, slick talking space traveller who evolved to a man-like creature after years of evolution from a pet feline stuck on a spacecraft for millennia. The actor was also Baldy’s Lookout in Scum – the guy who lets Carlin into the coal room to fight the number 2 guy. I just learned that. There are still tickets.

There’s a certain breast – related theme to this week's post.

Blake Blossom weighed in on Popbitch’s ‘baboon vs badger’ conundrum. I asked. 

 

 

I went to support the Manchester Boob Walk on Saturday, to help document the raising of awareness of Breast Cancer, and as part of this pharma experiment. If you read to the end, you’ll see I bailed on them to try and see someone famous, who is in Manchester at the time of writing. 

Who? Angela White, one of the most prolific porn stars of the last decade, is in the UK and in fact in Manchester right now. I gathered she developed a thing for Norwegian footballer Erik Haaland during the World Cup. He currently plays for Manchester City, who had a home game against Coventry FC yesterday. (1 nil to City.) 

Well, I kept checking her Insta stories in the hope of a quick photo with her. I went to 2 different Federal Cafes, still woozy from the caraway and probably dehydration too – she’d posted being in one venue, and I went to the other – not far from where I’d left people at the Boob Walk anyway. When I arrived at each one, there was a humongous queue to get in, but I doubt that was because of Angela. It’s just a popular spot. Her next update was from The Ethiad, the Man City stadium. So I got a bus, then had a long walk. I thought this was going to be utterly futile. I was right. A further update showed she was already in, meeting the squad, slapping their hands as they went into the complex. Her last post was of the players going onto the pitch. 

I went home. 

Manchester Nightlife Meetup group met in Oast House Saturday night with a plan to check out the new Sticks’n’Sushi bar in Spinningfields. We met, but the new bar / restaurant was dead, so we tried Sexy Fish which was full. I’d have liked to stay on Spinningfields, but we moved onto Box bar, which I just don’t like, sorry. Too chavvy. Got roped into pool games that I’m dreadful at. Moved onto Blues Kitchen, of which I’ve also had my fill. I didn’t last long. 

On the way out a trans influencer called Jessica Such collared me for some video interview. I’m assuming that’ll be on Insta soon. You can guess the question. And the answer.

Manchester Boob Walk… on Caraway

A month ago I attempted to get high on caraway, a seed available in many supermarkets, while attending the Manchester Day Parade. According to Dan Nestor – author of Get High Now (Without Drugs) – this is perfectly achievable. Minor dizziness and sickness was the upshot. 

I still had half the pot, so I figured a surreal – but very meaningful – gathering might be an ideal opportunity to try it out again. 

I don’t want to overlook the purpose of the event I attended today. Saturday 5th March, Manchester held host to the Boob Walk, raising awareness of Breast Cancer. There are around 59,400 new breast cancer cases in the UK every year, that's around 160 every day, according to Cancer Research UK. 

Hence, several hundred women dressed as breasts paraded from St Peter’s Square, down Oxford Rd and into Circle Square, where alternative event Manchester Psych Fest was taking place, with a rave, trippy outfits and yoga on offer. So fuck knows what a bunch of high-as-a-kite hippies thought when a barrage of literal tits rocked up for a photoshoot. 

 

Of course, on the way, I was chugging down this half pot of caraway seeds. These, Nestor says, give a sensation that’s ‘identical to taking an aspirin for a headache, but without having the headache.’ Maybe. We met at the Library at 11. By 11:30 I’d eaten the rest of the pot. Again, maybe a slight dizziness took over. I dunno. I made sure I kept drinking water; it was still a mild September day and when you’re walking, you notice the warmth. 

At this point, I noticed someone famous was in Manchester. I wanted to see if I could snap a selfie with them, so I bailed on the boobs and bussed to a different part of Manchester. But where? And for whom? Stay tuned...

Suffragette Annie Kenny getting in on the action

Try the New Sticks 'n' Sushi in Spinningfields

 

Looking forward this week: 

TV and movie convention For the Love of Retro takes place this weekend in Telford, which is a little too far for me. An incredible line-up though. I could easily have spent £400 if I could be arsed with a long drive and more money on a hotel room, which I can’t. 

New bar and restaurant Sticks ‘n’ Sushi opened in Spinningfields, a Japanese / Scandinavian chain. Manchester Nightlife are headed there on Saturday for cocktails and mocktails, plus to look around a few other bars. Glamorous decor, chilled background beats, possibly the odd celeb knocking about. Come join the Meetup group. See the newest parts of the city. 4 of us so far. Will be more by the weekend.

Bank Holiday Breakfast

I was at a family gathering yesterday where a family member was raving about Dishoom’s breakfasts. Dishoom serves up great Indian delicacies and lassi milkshakes. I’ve been for lunch a year ago, but I kept meaning to try their other menus. Here’s their breakfast menu. 

Hence, I’ve set up a meetup with Manc Mates for food, 10am, Sunday morning. Come join. 

I predictably have no plans for Sunday night, when we have a Bank Holiday on the Monday. I’m all ears...

Up! at Six Trees: Afternoon House Music

Love a good house music stomp. Thankfully promoters Up! Supplied an afternoon on the terrace of Six Trees in Trafford yesterday afternoon. Great music from Grace Sands and others including my friend Paul Smith. 

I set up a meetup with Manchester Nightlife and got a group together - some regulars, some new people - we met in Impossible then got a taxi down there. Great music and atmos. Weather held up too, thankfully, as the sun went down.

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House Music at Up this Saturday

Afternoon sessions are rising in popularity rapidly, and with good reason: no late night taxis, no disrupted sleep, more daylight and people are more likely to be available. That’s probably why a few DJs – including a friend of mine – have put together Up, an afternoon of house music in Six Trees out in Trafford. There’s a meetup with Manchester Nightlife that you should join. At the time of writing we’re planning where to meet – probably Impossible in the city centre first. 

 

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Delusions of Grandeur

Discussed Magic Eye pictures with Aisha Katya. I’d swear that is a chicken. Bill Duke – Mac in Predator - liked my photo of us. Saw the solar eclipse on Wednesday, from Hartshead Pike. If you missed it, there’s another in 12 months. 

 

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Went out for a few birthday drinks in Freemount Northern Quarter last night. Behind Closed Doors turned me away because I was in shorts. You’d think a bar with S&M befitted mannequins wouldn’t have that strict a dress code in 2026, but here we are. Moved to Voyuer, a new edgy bar with risque-sounding cocktails (mine was called ‘Delusions of Grandeur,’ so make of that what you will), where a trans waiter served us Baby Godfather shots, a caramel liqueur. Turned out BCD and Voyuer are part of the same company. We finished the night off in Guilty By Association. I managed to get the bus back. Good night in all.

Journal Club This Week

 

Journal Club returns to Hinterland Northern Quarter on Wednesday. Enjoy a night of writing prompts, vegan food and alcohol-free beverages. There’s a meetup with Manc Mates. 

I’m doing stuff with friends on Friday, so no meetup. Need a break from that scene, tbh. There’s another for the week after if you like house music. 

On the blog: another of the 48 Laws of Power, plus some plans for the next year, and a bizarre movie diet challenge.

Birthday Drinks, Meetup Drama, T Shirt Win

I mentioned on Friday that one of my Meetup attendees came out to Joshua Brooks then sacked us off to White Hotel, some competitor house music club. I’ve met up with him again last night, along with many other Meetup folk. I wanted to do some birthday drinks, and Meetup people are literally the ONLY people available to come out. So I put up an event with Manchester Nightlife (which, by the way, has now passed 1000 members. Only taken 2 years). 

8 people RSVPd. Most of them showed up in meeting spot Flok, including White Castle Guy. (Turns out he’d left JB’s last week because he’d had a run-in with a member of staff.) Some other people I knew from previous events attended, and some new folk. From Flok we moved to Lost in Tokyo, Japanese themed cocktail bar, then to Soup. For some reason I was absurdly overdressed for a warm summer’s night in hipstery Northern Quarter, wearing the blue 3-piece suit I got for a recent wedding. Soup’s doormen said they had a ‘no suit policy,’ that it wasn’t that vibe, but when they found out it was my birthday they made an exception. Fair play. 

People dropped off as the night went on, until it was just myself, White Castle Guy and a Chinese Guy who’s English was so rudimentary he was getting by with Google Translate on his phone. It was before midnight when the 3 of us were stood on the street and White Castle Guy started ranting about COVID conspiracies, vaccines and Fauci (who doesn’t even have any authority in this country). 

One thing you should know about me. I worked in social care during the pandemic as an essential worker. Loads of my clients died. I have clinically vulnerable relatives who were fortunate to make it through those years. I have no patience for anti-vaxx bullshit. 

Furthermore, at the end of the night, I had no energy to argue. I just went home. This morning I blocked White Castle Guy. Hmm. Of course he’s got a bible verse on his Insta. 

In slightly more positive news, I won the monthly photo competition from Last Exit to Nowhere again, and won 3 t shirts again! That photo was taken at the recent Comic Con Manchester.

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