Matt Tuckey is a writer from Oldham, England. He covers celebrities, night life, Manchester, fitness, creative writing, social media, psychology and events. Some of this may, in some way, help others. Or maybe it'll just entertain you for a while.
History
is a lot smaller than the three rooms that Taboo occupied at the
previous venue, but it's a much better looking club. The night itself
was always a fun one, so I can't wait to see it operate in the new unit. I'll be checking it out soon, so keep your eyes peeled on the
Manchester Cool Bars Meetup page and join
us.
I
have one solid plan this week which you can pencil in too: Cool Bars
is heading to The Birdcage on
Saturday night for the reopening of the Withy Grove club. New night
Stopout Saturdays launches this week, hosted by Love Island's Jamie Jewitt!
One
more thing: last week I discussed chips with
house music producer Route 94. Can anyone else say they've achieved
that level of celebrity hobnobbing?
It's
the 25th
Anniversary of Set You Free, the 1995 dance hit from
N-Trance, fronted by Oldham-raised singer
Kelly Llorenna.
Aptly, Saturday night saw the first Oldham Live take place in Parliament
Square in the centre of the town.
I
actually didn't realise that KL was the singer on N-Trance until I
saw Oldham Live's lineup earlier this week. I made a plan to drop in.
I
was a little late. I bumped into a colleague on the way, so sorry for
my rambling northern commentary on the videos. Kelly gave brilliant renditions of
her hits True Love and Set You Free.
A
great performance. Shame the crowds weren't large, but old-school
singers' audiences are always a little difficult to gather together. People have babies and whatnot.
Other
performances included Oldham-born Clint Boon from Inspiral Carpets, The Farm, Gemma Hunt from Cbeebies Swashbuckle,
Brother Beyond and
Stooshe. Something for everyone, really.
Great to see local talent that has made it big coming to give
something back to their hometown.
What
I'm going to say isn't profound: lots has already been written about
the negative impact of mobile phones on sleep. Shining a rectangle of
pure light straight at your retinas before you go to bed is hardly
going to help you drop off into a peaceful slumber, is it? Yet which
idiot still does this? The one preaching to you right now.
I've
struggled with sleep my whole life- waaaay before smartphones came
around. The sleep issues I have are connected to a head injury I
sustained at birth. Connections between sleep disturbance and head
trauma have been documented, but I've not properly investigated it
myself (another #psychologysaturday idea?) But since 2010, when I got
my first smartphone, I've struggled more. Granted, moving out of my
parents' gaff and running out of money was a factor, but having a
smartphone in my bedroom has been one too. So, as part of my
#psychologysaturday theme, I'm going to keep my phone in the lounge.
I won't even walk into my bedroom with my phone in my pocket, let
alone leave it charging while I'm asleep.
Some
people may suggest, why not put it on night mode? On calls only?
Well, because as I drop off I'll think of something else that I want
to check, and I'll end up using my phone to go online and look
something up, or add something to a list, and further balls up my
melatonin intake. I'll be tempted to listen to
ASMR
videos to help me drop off. (They help me relax, but stop me sleeping
as even if I cover the screen, I'll still look at it once the video
has ended.)
If
the phone is in a different room, I'll ignore any notifications /
calls that come through. Let's give it a shot and see how I feel in a
month. I'll also see if there are any improvements at the gym.
In
an attempt to tone up and try something different at the gym I
decided I'd work the cardio machines for a kilometre each to see what
it felt like.
Just
after 11am I stuck on Melon Radio's Soulful channel
(a bit of a random choice, but a good one) and started the graft.
Here are the times for doing 1km:
Cross
train forward 16.16
Hand
bike forward 1.53
Bike
with no back to the seat 2.34
Hand
bike backward (problem with programming) 5.01
Row
4.22
Cross
train backwards (surprisingly fatiguing to the hands) 22.35
Old-style
cross trainer forward 19.45
Bike
with a back to the seat 2.45
By
2pm I had 9% battery, so I called it there. I'd been doing some abs
work between each movement, which spread the workout into hours. You
know how much I lost? 200g. The subsequent protein shake would more
than have reversed that weight loss.
I
much prefer weights and I seem to benefit from it a lot more, so,
duh, I guess I'll stick with them.
I
went to The Big Apple in April of 2000, a family holiday with my
parents, sister and aunt. Amazing weekend. It just happened that then
British heavyweight boxing champ Lennox Lewis was taking on American
challenger Michael Grant
that weekend, and we found ourselves outside Madison Square gardens
while the fight was taking place.
The
security guard would not let us in.
I've
done some digging around and found a few souvenirs from the trip, so
I figured I'd insta a few of them and upload them in a few Throwback
Thursday posts. Here's the first one.
I
realised here that I still had a fear of heights. The observatory of
the WTC was one flat floor with huge windows, and the edges of the
floor dropped down into seating benches so that your knees were
almost against the glass. There's a picture of me somewhere where I'm
looking back and smiling, pretending I'm not totally shitting myself.
God,
I felt like shit last night. I went from work to the gym to Andy's Man Club, and my body started to crash
halfway through AMC. I felt a little better after eating, but
Prospective Mondays was going to have to be Prospective Tuesdays this
week.
The
weekend is similarly busy, kicking off with Friday night. Manchester Cool Bars
are meeting for cocktails in lush South-American steakhouse Bem Brasil. I've been to the Northern
Quarter venue but we're taking a look at the King St West outlet just
off Deansgate. I've eaten from their menu a couple of times but I've
never had their cocktails. Come check the place out! The restaurant
runs The Latin Corner, a weekly event with Spanish and South American
music. It'll make a pleasant change from
Drake and being in love with the coco. Join
us from 9!
Saturday's
antics kick off early- 6pm. I'm going to check out the evening lineup of
Oldham Live, which offers 'free music and entertainment under the Parliament
Square owls.' The main attraction, for me at least: Kelly Llorenna from
N-Trance!
There's no meetup for this but by all means tweet me, and tell it to my heart, or at least, my app, if you fancy going.
After
this I'm darting into Manchester to meet Manchester Cool Bars
again, this time starting in Sakana and
heading to Club LIV for a spot of celeb
spotting and partying. ID Essential! Loads of gorgeous people on show
and watching people blow tons on Bollinger is always entertaining.
I've
been surrounded by so many people recently who rave about running
like it's the greatest pastime ever. Google 'running and endorphins'
(endorphins being pleasure chemicals found in the bloodstream) and
you'll find a slew of articles like this one
and this one
and this one
proclaiming running to be the best legal high going. It's been touted by those that do it so much that I thought I'd give it another shot.
I
decide on a route similar to one I used to run when I was 17- in
fact, it's a little shorter as it goes past my current home and I cut
out the part that went past my parents'. I wanted to see if it made
me feel as good as people said it would.
“It
gets you out in the fresh air,” they say. “It clears your mind.”
“It's great for mental health as well as physical.” I have no
doubt that, for some people, these statements ring true. But when you
live in Oldham, an outskirt town, the air isn't so fresh anyway. And
yeah, it clears your mind- and leaves you with an overwhelming sense
of boredom.
The
original route used to take me 30 minutes, if memory serves. I
remember flying around it, weighing a little over 60kg back in 1999.
I'm now over 80kg, with a load of muscle and fat added to my ageing
frame. Around half way around, the outside of my right foot started
to give me a little jip. I couldn't do anything other than keep
going, so I ploughed on, arriving home in the pissing rain, and in
agony, clocking in at 45 minutes.
I
left it a few days before doing any more exercise. On returning, I
hit the gym and tried a series of 10 minute runs. I started with 10
minutes on the cross trainer, then did a few minutes of abs work-
sit-ups, crunch machine, planks. I interspersed each run with around
5 minutes of stomach exercises, to let my legs recover. I started at
7.0kph, a steady jog. The next run was 7.1, and so on. I battled
through 8.0kph, with the same right side of the bridge of my right
foot causing agony.
I
typically forgot to weigh myself on entry to the gym, but I was
84.1kg on the way out. This whole thing was a terrible idea. I went
home and watched a film.
So,
no. Running is not for me. For cardio and fresh air, I'll use a
skipping rope, thanks. It's much better for your feet, knees and
muscles all over your body. It also means if you get tired and want
to stop, you aren't miles from home. You're in the same spot
geographically that you started in.
Who
enjoys running? Not me, that's for sure. Give me weights or a punch
bag over a jog any day of the week. I guess the point of this blog
post is that exercise should be fun (hence me uploading it on
#psychologysaturday).
Just because everyone else does it, doesn't mean you have to too. If
you're not getting endorphins from exercise, try a different form of
exercise. I'll stick with the gym, thanks.
