Wednesday, 11 February 2026

Journal Club: Love

Organiser Fi writes ‘LOVE: Thank you or please’ on the flipchart. That’s the theme for this month’s Journaling Club in Manchester’s Hinterland. We start with a little 5-minute warm-up task, a familiar one: 

I’M HERE BECAUSE 

I’m here because again I’m looking for stuff to do that isn’t just getting pissed in bars. I’m a writer anyway, so it’s good to do something creative. I have to address this: there’s a dude in here who looks like Filnjor in The Northman. He has the beard. The hair. How’s that for automatic writing? Rollo from Faithless once wrote: 

I get this writer’s block 

It comes as quite a shock 

And now I’m stuck between a 

Hard place and the biggest rock. 

PHOTO OF BUDDHIST TEACHING 

The next prompt: 

MY EXPERIENCE OF LOVE AND FEAR IS 

I sat this one out. Too personal for me. 

Organiser Reggie takes over at this point. On the board he writes: 

THANK YOU / PLEASE 

Here, we’re asked to write from the perspective of something that we love. I thought fast. 

I am chocolate. I am dear, but a man has a Secret Santa present to buy. He heard that his colleague, who he has drawn in work, likes chocolate. That’s all he knows about his colleague. All he does is transfer calls to her. I’m a chocolate box set, 4 circular chocolates with Christmas designs printed on them: a snowman, a reindeer, etc. I’m wrapped, ready to be given to my purchaser’s co-worker. She unwraps me. The woman’s face, the moment we see each other, drops. She appears unreasonably angry. She places me to one side. It seems my purchaser has been misinformed. After the handout... 

The gong goes at this point. Cliffhanger. I’ll tell you later. 

The next prompt: FEAR. 

Fi explains that a lot of emotional trauma that we feel isn’t about the actual fear. What would that fear look like, personified? Would they be casually spoken or formal? How would they be dressed? 

Whatever it looks like, my fear is instantly recognisable to myself and everyone in the room. My fear is more about other people’s reactions than the inciting moment or person itself. I say to my fear, I know it’s you, fear, that is the problem; not the person. 

-- 

Gong. 

The next Weds the 11th, Hinterland hosts their second ‘Create and Play’ session, involving chess and Lego for adults. 

Oh, and if you want to know what happened with the chocolate: I heard my colleague say to another, ‘you don’t give someone something like that unless you want to kill them with sugar!’ Later she handed them out to the team, so I had one. It was nice. Biscuity.

Tuesday, 10 February 2026

Tweet for Chaos

I guess it’s time for you to hate me again 

Let's begin, now hand me the pen 

How should I begin it and where does it all end? 

The world is just my medicine ball, you're all in 

 -Eminem, Medicine Ball 

Back in early 2021, just as the vaccine rollout commenced, I noticed a few people I followed on social media were airing vaccine scepticism and sometimes straight up anti-vaxx falsehoods. At first, I thought maybe one or two people I knew might need to screw their heads on. I thought they were being post-ironic and making themselves look foolish for humorous effect, but after a few days on Facebook I realised these people were just idiots who either hadn’t rsearched the scientific info on vaccines or had, but just couldn’t understand it. 

I thought maybe if they read up they’d come to their senses. I quickly realised these people weren’t ever going to change. They were lost causes, who couldn’t bear the idea that they were wrong. 

I started to keep a list on Omininotes. I also started to cut off a lot of friends. Before long, I started to get a little hooked on keeping tabs on people: anti-vaxxers, Tories, Trumpster Republicans, Zionists, etc. etc. 

Omninotes allows you to search words to see if you’ve written them anywhere, and they’ll show up in whichever note you’ve written. You can quickly tell if you’ve ever recorded anyone as being a Trump fan, for example. Back in June, a certain MMA fighter found himself in hospital for what at first seemed an undefined condition. Nobody seemed to be saying on X. The fighter’s name rang a bell. I did an Omninotes search. It turned out he was one of a few MMA athletes who’d been sharing anti-vaxx content over Instagram in early 2021. I reminded X of this. 

Within seconds, my X notifications blew up. I was branded a limey piece of shit, a scumbag, and ‘the world’s biggest bitch.’ I’ve heard worse, to be fair. It turned out the guy had Staphylococcus aureus, a skin bacteria – not normally that troublesome but in some cases can be damaging. It also turned out he was in ICU. 

I deleted the tweet and put my X to private, but by this time I was being bombarded with death threats and insults. I reported hundreds of people. Quite a few of their accounts were removed. They were spamming my Youtube account and my blog with shit comments about *checks notes* vaccinated dolphins. 

It wasn’t a pleasant experience, but you try working in healthcare during a pandemic, dealing with hundreds of people screaming at you because you can’t put them through to their allocated professional because the professional’s caseload has more than quadrupled due to 14 years of Tory staff cuts. You try listening to people cry down the phone asking you ‘what do you expect me to do?’ The only answer you can give them is, ‘I am a Business Support Officer. I’m not allowed to advise you in any way. I can’t put you through to anyone. I take messages.’ Of course, they’ve been leaving messages every day for a week, and nobody got back to them. 

That’s because before the Tory takeover in 2010, the professional’s caseload would have had perhaps 10 people on it. During the pandemic, they had maybe 100 duty cases on top of that. During that period, a lot of the clients I had were aged around 50-75. They were getting into that vulnerable age group. 

They died in their droves. Every day, a son or daughter called reporting their parent’s death. We had to apologise, and again, send the message across. 

Eventually, in early 2021, the COVID vaccine was released, and steadily, those cases and deaths and subsequent phone calls started to decline. In its place, however, was a new breed of idiot: someone who believes they have more understanding than the experts who operate in the field of virology: the anti-vaxxer. These range from health shop managers, MMA fighters (as mentioned), incapacity benefit claimants, Olympians, reality TV stars, rappers, porn stars, actors, strippers, house music producers, pop singers, authors, newscasters, televangelists, comedians, tennis players, politicians, DJs, CBD CEOs and protein brand managers. 

Understand this: they were all wrong. Every one of them. And every dumb post that they uploaded strengthened a totally spurious narrative that there was something wrong with the idea of taking a vaccine. 

Anyway, the science has been properly explained form the start. I’m not going to reiterate it. That one MMA tweet, though, absolutely ballooned my blog hits. My X account has a link to this blog. People were finding my site and royally abusing me over it, even giving me thinly veiled death threats. I deleted all the comments, but the page views are forever. There was a huge spike, from that moment, that lasted up until October. 

It’s time to bring that spike back with some exposé tweeting. I’m not going to name random members of the public (of which I’ve recorded hundreds), but I will name anyone who’s in the public eye – whoever’s taken the decision to expose themselves on TV, like reality TV stars or suchlike. They’re getting outed on X.

I’ve got 1.7 million hits on the blog so far, and 488 thousand of those came in the last year. I’ve been running the blog since 2008. I’m going to stay active this month so that I have things to blog about, but for now, let’s bombard this awful X platform… 

Current page views: 

Overall 1,711,729 

Last month 41,766 

Yesterday 1276

Monday, 9 February 2026

Create and Play / Psychology Group / La Discotheque / Bar Scene Massacre

 

Quite a range going on this week: Wednesday night, alcohol-free vegan bar Hinterland hosts Create and Play, an adult play session involving Lego and art materials. Lose your inhibitions and join in the creativity. Follow writing prompts. Build. Draw. I’ve not been to this yet. Will I? Maybe. Wednesday, 7-9pm. 

Thursday night: I’ve revived the Manchester Psychology Social Group after a break. I’ve found a venue that I believe to be alcohol-free, quiet enough, healthy enough and central to the city on Mosley St off Piccadilly Gardens. Soup Co seems just the right match. We need a topic though! Thursday, 6:30pm. 

Saturday night: balls to Valentines. Let’s have a house music club night instead. La Discotheque travel the country bringing their brand of disco house to cities across the UK. Think stiltwalkers, confetti, singers, DJs, familiar names from house music and dancers with… shiny disco balls for heads. I’m looking forward to it. I still need to buy a ticket. But there is a meetup with Manchester Nightlife and one other attendee has signed up. Make it 3 of us! I’m really looking forward to Miguel Campbell and Horse Meat Disco gracing the decks. It’s a nice early event from 3pm too, so no need for taxis or coming home in the wee hours. 

Amidst everything that there is to look forward to, the Manchester nightlife scene is still taking a battering. Revolution on both Oxford Rd and Deansgate Locks have closed for good. Revolution de Cuba on Peter St has also closed down. I always knew it as insanely popular with huge queues to get in, but regardless, I couldn’t stand the place. There was just something about it that seemed incredibly generic. 80s-inspired Simmons on Deansgate has also bit the dust. A story that I will probably tell for the rest of my life is that I kissed a Playboy model there once. At the risk of burning a bridge…

 

Menagerie has also closed, months after moving from Spinningfields to Manchester Hall on Bridge St. Such a shame. A favourite bar in both locations. According to The M.E.N, they’ll reopen in a THIRD location. We’ll see. 

On the blog: a writeup of Sheffield Comic Con, a journaling writeup and a Jamaican recipe. Also a new project that might get me in a spot of hot water. Again, to be seen.

Wednesday, 4 February 2026

Shapeshifters in Joshua Brooks

It’s taken 43 years of me being alive, and much longer, but eventually someone has come up with the bright idea of daytime clubbing: running a nightclub event early enough to get the bus home after. Sure, other people have tried it, but Manchester institution Joshua Brooks seem to be the only local outfit successfully pulling it off. 

Last week they brought in 2000s house music producer The Shapeshifters, who’s hit Lola’s Theme reached no.1 in 2004, for their Daytime Disco event. The only people I know who remember The Shapeshifters rarely go out any more to the point where I stopped asking, so I threw it on Meetup. One new Manchester Nightlife attendee RSVP’d, a woman a little older than me. We both bought tickets early on, so we both committed. 

We had a good chat at Yes bar at around 4pm, then jumped over to Joshua’s. Before long, she went to put her coat in the cloakroom and didn’t come back, then left the Meetup group. 

I get it. If you were hoping it would be a group thing and it turns out not to be, I see that the situation would be uncomfortable. Whatever, I just soaked up the music and atmos. Incredible. 

 

Monday, 2 February 2026

Journaling Club / Sheffield Comic Con This Week

So. Veganuary – a month of veganism – is done. February will be a hell of a lot more interesting. 

The first full week alone has a Journaling Club at Hinterland on Wednesday (there’s a Meetup with Manc Mates) and a Comic Con in Sheffield, ran by Creed Conventions. I’ve not been to their cons before, but this time there’s Craig Charles and Chris Barrie – Lister and Rimmer from UK TV Sci Fi show Red Dwarf. I’m going to meet them. Tickets are still available. 

There are already meetups for the following week too, plus there’s a house music blog post to go up and a new blog project to begin.

Sunday, 1 February 2026

Veganuary ‘26 Review

Veganuary 2026 has concluded. The month of veganism – my second attempt in 2 years – was not quite the success I’d hoped for when I started out on the 1st of this month. 

Weight loss was one goal. I started at 80.5kg after Christmas’ excess, and after dieting – not just following the recipes but cutting back on bread and porridge too – I came down to 73.0. This loss can partly be attributed to a moment of distraction and not checking the ingredients on a pack of vegan sausages, which included my nemesis, mushrooms, which floored me in work and had me sleeping – and fasting - for days. I had them for breakfast and by 10am I had to go home. 

Furthermore, a lot of vegan pre-prepared meals aren’t even that healthy. There are a lot of red symbols indicating high fats and sugars, certainly in Aldi’s products. 

Another goal was to beat a few personal bests in chinups and dips, and running. I achieved none. I was getting there with these, but I was still nowhere near the records. Some people swear by veganism for fitness. It didn’t work for me. 

I managed a few recipes, although not as many as I’d have liked. They’ll appear here over the weeks. I find a lot of vegan recipes quite bland, and not as filling. How dedicated vegans manage, I don’t know. I uploaded one Meetup to vegan restaurant Hinterland, which went down well with a mostly new group of people in Manchester Nightlife. I’d have ran more but the weather is abysmal in northern England in January. 

I did misstep at one point, eating some cereal with almond milk. All vegan, until you take into account it was Aldi Honey Nut Cornflakes, and honey is basically bee puke, so not technically vegan. 

Once midnight passed, though…

 

I’ve done Veganuary twice now. I really miss the restaurant deals in Manchester, and all the meat-based food available at cut-price, so I think it would be better to mix in more vegan meals throughout the year than do a full on vegan project. 

There are other monthly challenges to undertake. Stay tuned for that...

Saturday, 31 January 2026

Parsnip Tagine

My first attempt at a tagine was this Green Roasting Tin recipe from Rukmini Iyer: Sweet Potato and Parsnip Tagine with Dates and Coriander. 

Memory difficulties always impact me on new recipes. This time I didn’t have the right sized spring onions, but that probably balanced out. I charged ahead and forgot to toast the almonds before throwing them in. Then I put the coriander in too early too. It took me an outrageous 40 mins to prep, when it should have been 10. It all worked out in the end. I’m not a massive parsnip fan, but then I’m not a massive ‘not being able to fit into my suit trousers’ fan either. 

They were the best tasting parsnips I’ve eaten, to be fair. Good medley of flavours.