Hacienda Classica Afterparty This Weekend

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The last meetup I ran was a success with a good group of lads joining up for food and drinks in the sun. A good contrast to previous nights out. There’s honestly a part of me wondering how long I want to keep running these meetups, with the cost, the no-shows, the fallouts, the backstabbing, the difficult people using meetup as a crutch for a social life when they clearly can’t form those friendships any other way. Am I including myself here? I don’t know. 

I realise on the one hand these #prospectivemondays posts are an attempt to draw people in and encourage people to try events and meet new people themselves, and thus complaining about the flakiness and the unnecessary arguments kinda works against that, but I blog about my life, and disappointments are unfortunately part of it. It’s a lot of money to keep being let down. 

Well, I’ve got a handful of ideas left. Then I’ll make a decision. 

One of those ideas: taking other people’s events and running meetups to coincide with them, encouraging the meetup groups to take part in something that otherwise wouldn’t be listed there. I’ve ran a few meetups previously in Hinterland, the vegan cafe in The Northern Quarter. Hinterland run a lot of events themselves, and I’ve been quite tempted to get involved, but their events book up quickly as it’s a small venue. I’ve managed to get a free ticket to a journaling class that they’re running on Wednesday. The theme is ‘Freedom.’ How free are we, as people? 

I have put up a meetup for this on Manchester Psychology Social Group, but I’m the only attendee there. There are still tickets on Eventbrite. Wednesday night, 7pm. 

Saturday night: Manchester Nightlife is out again, this time to The Albert Hall for Hacienda Classical Afterparty. On the decks: Todd Terry, Felix Da Housecat and Greame Park. Also expect a live PA from Alison Limerick of Where Love Lives fame. I’ve missed several attempts to see her perform this over the years! 

In other news, I’ve managed to surpass 1 and a third million hits on the blog, partly after an immense and somewhat inexplicable spike in the last month. More hits have come in in the last month than in any other month since I’ve ran the blog.

Bongo's Bingo / Hong Thai / Carol Vordeman

I realise this is a long shot, but if you’ve ever wanted to win a Ninja Air Fryer to the sounds of DJ Sammy’s Fly on the Wings of Love, there is as it happens such an opportunity in Manchester’s Albert Hall, a 115-year-old chapel in the city centre. The occasion is of course Bongo’s Bingo, an absurd game where the prizes range from a Luke Littler darts set, a giant fluffy unicorn, an electric piano, some Coco Pops (to be thrown around the venue with willing abandon) and a double ended dildo. Towards the end of the games, the prizes get a little more useful, with the last game winner landing a solid £1500. I was at the Saturday daytime event yesterday with a mate from Manchester Nightlife meetup group. Great fun. No wins for us sadly. Albert Halls upper decks get HOT in the June sun. 

 

 

After this I ran a meetup with Manchester Nightlife to Hong Thai, a well-regarded Thai / Chinese fusion restaurant in Ancoats. Good chat with new members, great spicy food and was close to Counter House for cocktails. The whole thing wrapped up early enough to get the bus back.

Khao Soi in Hong Thai in Ancoats. Spicy broth. Then a Spicy Margarita in Counter House in Cutting Room Square. Good evening with new #meetup members.

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— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) June 29, 2025 at 8:31 PM

 

Lastly, I got an Instagram comment from Countdown's Carol Vordeman. I made her laugh. Go look. Too complicated to explain. 

In the Suit Trousers Again

Back in August I wrote the Before 43 Bucket List, a few tasks to set myself before my birthday. I recently managed one of these: to diet and fast my way down to 71.9kg, and into the trousers. 

I then treated myself to a ton of food and I’m now 78.1. Jesus Christ. That’s nearly as much as I was when I started, at 80kg. I didn’t manage to do it before the Tenerife holiday, but not long after. The 15th. 

The process: recipes from books, home-made vegetable soup, sweet potato oven chips, intermittent fasting. Avoiding cravings and staying too busy to think about food. I also hammered the fitness, pushing my dips record from 160 to 175. Didn’t quite achieve any other records.

Made it into the suit trousers recently #diet

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— Matt Tuckey 🇬🇧 (@matttuckey.bsky.social) June 28, 2025 at 7:59 AM

So that’s 3 of 10, and my birthday is in a month. Oh dear.

Come Get Hong Thai Food in Ancoats!

On the blog soon: a psychology book review, a piece on how to train your mind to narrow your focus – as explained to my by the NHS – and a recipe review. 

Friday night: GetSocial, a new group to rival WeRoad, are holding a premium event in Banyan Spinningfields. £10 tickets, but it does get you a discount card for drinks in several venues and works at future events too. I’m not there as there is one person going who turned out to be a bit of a twat, and another who should have been at my meetup on Saturday but didn’t bother showing. 

Saturday night: Manchester Nightlife trip to Hong Thai, a renowned Chinese / Thai restaurant on Oldham St Ancoats. I hear good things over instagram. Time to give it a shot. After that, Cutting Room Square is a stonesthrow away, so there’s plenty of choice for bars.

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Capri Beach Club

Getting back into the swing of running meetups after a few weeks off. 

Manchester has a temporary cocktail bar in Shambles Square called Capri Beach Club, a kind of Balearic open air venue with house music and a gelato stall. I ran an early-doors meetup with Manchester Nightlife. 

5 attendees were listed. 2 of us showed. It’s getting exhausting putting on meetups and not getting the attendees. If people don’t respond to the events, then it’s not a popular idea in the first place, so perhaps that would be reflective of my decision making. But if I keep finding that people say they’ll come, and then don’t… surely that’s reflective of other people’s organisational skills? I’ve commented on the meetup page asking people to only RSVP if they’re going to actually turn up. 

It’s always been an issue on Meetup – you never know how many are actually going to show. I have a few more ideas for meetups to run, but after I’ve exhausted them, I’m likely to step down as organiser and stop paying that subscription. It’s a lot of money for little reward and a lot of abuse. 

There was no abuse last night, but other attendees have verbally abused me to my face and criticised me over the internet because they didn’t like the bar, or they didn’t like the topics of conversation, if I understand correctly. Weird. Well, you can’t please everyone. 

Capri was a fine choice, though – music, cocktails, table service and weather were on point.

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Black Pepper Bananas

Got my ass out of bed early to dabble in a breakfast recipe. This one from Rukmini Iyer’s India Express was Black Pepper Bananas with Palm Sugar and Porridge. It looked like a good Bengali twist on a similar recipe I’ve had for breakfast a few times. 

22 mins in total. This should have taken 40. Weird, because normally recipes take me longer than prescribed. Wasn’t sure how many times to grind the pepper pot for the right amount, but I seem to have guessed correctly. 

Came out sweet and wholesome, and stocked me up for the morning.

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Baked Eggs

Up early again this morning (16/4) to cook a recipe. Who even am I?! This time, from Rukmini Iyer’s The Green Roasting Tin:  Baked Eggs with Beetroot, Celeriac, Dill and Feta. 

Started this at 6:21am. Finished 7:35. Should only have taken 30 mins, but first thing in the morning when I’m tired, not awake and hungry, I’m going to be slower than usual. 

First problem: I don’t have a particularly big mixing bowl. I guess I could have used an oversized Tupperware box, which I’ve done before, but again, to access it, it means rearranging my entire kitchen cupboard. A cereal bowl sufficed, but it was FULL. Next, my scales weren’t sensitive enough to measure out 180g of anything. I did a lot of guesswork. I bought sourdough for this recipe, but my fridge was also full, so kept it in a cupboard, and it went off before I could use it. The eggs themselves needed a little longer in the oven than advertised, and the ‘nest’ of the beetroot – that contains the egg – weren’t as solid as I expect they should have been. 

The egg was the best part.

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Tenerife '25 Day 8

Flew home. Much more fluid airport experience this time. 

Great holiday. Spending time with the niece and second cousins was the highlight. Getting burned to shit was the lowlight. Really should have covered up more. Factor 50 and intermittent t shirt wearing wasn’t enough. Will try again next year. Lots of others on the plane had similar twat tans, so I’m not alone in my inability to manage UV. 

I didn’t manage to do the submarine tour, snorkelling with turtles, jet skis, the monkey and parrot parks or the Viking ship cruise. 2026!

Tenerife '25 Day 7

TUESDAY 27/6 

The last full day was a boat day. We walked down to the harbour in the morning to for a boat trip, out into the Mediterranean, so see dolphins and pilot whales, some incredibly beautiful mammals. Pilot whale infants, the guide tells us, stay dependent for 15 years and tend to stay within their pod. 

 

 Which are these? Any experts? 

 

Great views of the wildlife, but I just do not have the sea legs. Thankfully my stomach settled once we were back on land, and we headed to La Cofradia for lunch and La Tasca 7 for tea.

Tenerife '25 Day 6

MONDAY 26/5 

Food in the town with the family. The House restaurant in a rustic Spanish backstreet served up garlic bread, penne arrabbiata, bacon and garlic tomatoes with chilli, and sugar and lemon crepes. Great food, shame about the African street entertainers blasting music and performing mediocre balancing acts. 

More beach.

Spinningfields Bar Crawl - Get Involved

On the blog: the last few Tenerife posts, that I’m sure are keeping you in suspense. Cough. Probably another recipe review. Plus I’ve got a few things that have happened since coming home. 

On socials: Actor William Forsythe reshared my birthday message to him over Instagram stories. Actor Richard Chaves liked my pic of us. Actor of a, uh, different kind Kat Kyle liked my pedantic grammar comment. I forgot to mention, last week Arabelle Raphael also liked this this joke in the comments of her reel. My comment got 10 thousand likes on a video. 

All is not well on the online social group scene. Not just my meetups, but it seems that there’s an issue with other groups on the site, plus groups on Discord too. Manchester Social has proven to be hugely unpopular with certain crowds, if this Reddit thread is anything to go by. 

Sadly, I got mentioned in this too. It seems in a meetup with Manchester Psychology Social group I briefly mentioned confidence building as a facet of psychology, and what I said was massively misinterpreted. Some weeks later, I got utterly lambasted for it. I apologised on the Reddit thread, although I’m still not sure what for. I can hardly even remember the conversation in question. It could, I guess, explain attendance dropping off. I did everything I could to bring people together just to share an interest, and it feels like it was thrown right back at me. Obviously, a bit of time has passed since this thread was active. I do want to run another Psychology meetup, but to where, and to do what exactly, I don’t know. 

The upshot is, you can’t please everyone. I took a break from running meetups as I had a ton of conventions to go to, plus a holiday, so I was too busy anyway, but I really just didn’t want the heat. 

But I did run a meetup to the Northern Quarter Friday for Happy Hour in Pen and Pencil, Before the start time, Get Social launched in Banyan in Spinningfields. This Meetup group is ran by the same guy who does the Manchester WeRoad meetups, and seeems to have a similar purpose: just bringing people together whether they’re travelling or local. I had a look. Pleasant enough evening, good people, still a bit of a sausage fest. 3 of us met in Pen and Pencil, which was utterly dead, so we tried a few other bars but called it early. 

The rumour on the night was that the heads at WeRoad cancelled the Manchester group because of an offensive comedy night that Manchester’s WeRoad branch apparently attended, hence the Manchester team launched GetSocial. 

Saturday night: There was supposed to be something happening in Freight Island, although I can’t find it on Meetup. Freight weren’t letting in anyway, so we tried 186 but I was in pumps so they weren’t having me. BLVD nearby hosted a hen do of mostly Irish girls from Crewe. The DJ got everyone into what he called a ‘Congo line’ (conga?) that threaded through the bar and out into the Spinningfields Avenue. Then my friend and I shot off to Ocasa, formerly Australasia (samba music) and Lawn Club, which was pumping out cheesy pop for another hen do. Mostly women. Can’t complain. 

So what’s happening this week? 

Friday night: looks like WeRoad meetup still exists in some form in Manchester, as they return to Box bar on Deansgate, booking the upper level out. I’ll be there to see which familiar faces I can spot, and also to try to badger a few people into my own meetups. 

Speaking of which, Saturday night: Spinningfields Bar Crawl with Manchester Nightlife. I’m aiming to get to a few new places this night, including Habbibi and Shiruku. If you fancy some cocktails, smart décor, possible celeb sightings and chilled house music, pencil this in for Saturday and come meet us. 

 

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Tenerife '25 Day 5

 

My data roaming ran out at this point and Wi-Fi at Los Claveles was intermittent at best. More beach. Managed to shift the hangover. 

 

 

25/5 Sunday 

Early evening myself and my parents found the meeting point for Tenerife Stars, a stargazing tour on Mount Teide. 

Tour guide Ozzy, a trilingual and hugely passionate astronomer, took us on a coach up the mountain, and explained the history of the island beginning with the smashing of 2 tectonic plated millions of years ago, forcing the volcano upwards out of the seabed of the Mediterranean and forming what is now the third biggest volcano in the world. NASA, he tells us, calls it ‘The Gate to Heaven,’ the peak of which having risen up from inside the middle of the original volcano.

 

Eventually, the coach having wound its way through numerous high-lying rustic villages, we arrive at a vineyard with a giant wine press. 

 

 

 

 

The tables are pre-laid and we sit, meet other tour guests, and the staff serve up some exquisite pumpkin soup, chicken and Canarian potatoes (new potatoes with a generous salt coating). 

 

 

 

After an opportunity to eat and wander the grounds, we’re ushered back on the coach and we continue the climb. 

Teide, Ozzy tells us, last erupted in 1798 (Google suggests it did again in 1909.) Star Wars and Star Trek have filmed there among the alien-looking spiky rocks. Listen to them crunch underfoot. 

 

 

 

We reach twilight on the journey, and by the time we arrive at the viewing platform it’s already pitch black. It’s a clear night. There’s no moon, but the celestial hemisphere is in full view.   

 

Ozzy describes the different stars and constellations, pointing them out in the sky with a laser pen. He explains how long it would theoretically take us to get there travelling at the speed of light. A couple of large telescopes have been set up on tripods on the cobbles, and we queue to look. Through the first, a distant galaxy, millions of light years away, appears as a streak of light as we’re looking at it side-on. At the second telescope, 2 visible white dots are actually a double star – 2 balls of gas burning in proximity. A constellation through the third telescope displays as a frosted glass effect – millions of stars against the void.   

Food and hot drinks are available at this point.   

Finally there’s a photo op against the cosmos. I paid for this one.

 

What an experience. Well recommended.