Meet-ups

I moved to Manchester a little over a year ago. All my friends are in the South or in other countries. This can make you feel somewhat frustrated; you want to go do that thing you like but the people who would have gone with you are not here. Logical choice, then: go on your own or find other people to go with.

I’ve been going on my own for a year. It’s comfortable, and nice, and agreeable to be able to do what you want when you want without constraints. But, as any writer or reader will tell you, conflict causes plot. Without conflict you have no story.

I joined a meet-up app. It lists tonnes and tonnes of interest groups you can join - crocheting, hiking, learning another language, brunch for chats and bants, movies - anything where you need more than one person to make it a thing.

Anyone who knows me also knows that as an INTJ I don’t choose to mix with people because they are People©, and I don’t like People©. Like K says, “A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it”. However, when you aren’t beholden to anyone else, you can choose to go see a movie but when you wake up and it’s cold outside, you choose to sack it off as a bad job because, well, you can.

I’m also not good at plans. I mean, I can make plans and I can stick to them, but only when it’s at work or with someone else involved - because if there’s one thing I try to achieve it’s to do what I say I will. If I tell you a project will be ready for Friday, then it’ll be ready for Friday. If I tell you I’ll sort something by 4pm, then I’ll sort it by 4pm. However, when I tell myself I’m going to watch a movie on Saturday, I get to that point 2 hours before it starts, check the bus timetable, and then decide I can’t be arsed. I back out. Because at that moment when I made the plan, I believed I was going to follow it through. But now I’m bored and restless, now I can’t make myself do it.

I joined the app. I found a movie club. I like movies a lot and it’s my escape, so why not? However, every movie that has come up as a group + social meet-up afterwards has been a film I’ve either already seen or have no wish to see. Cinema tickets are relatively cheap in the city centre (£5 at the Vue, Printworks, or £6 at Odeon Great Northern, compared to my old Cineworld Poole of £10.95) so I can get an all-day bus ticket and a film for the same price as a cinema ticket where I used to live. Down there I had a Cineworld Unlimited card, so for about £17.50 a month I could see a boundless amount of movies. I only had to watch 2 a month and I’d saved money. However up here, when the tickets are £5-£6, there’s no point getting an Odeon card for £20 a month - and especially as half the time the foreign language films I want are only on at the Vue, not Odeon anyway.

I digress.

I joined the app and finally, yesterday, I made myself go to one. We saw Knives Out, the Rian Johnson comedy whodunnit, which wasn’t really a comedy and not actually a whodunnit - review in another post. Afterwards we went to the official rendez-vous bar; the organiser reserves tables for us and we pile in and drink, dissect the movie or just get pie and chat about other things entirely.

As a format, it’s a great concept. It’s like renting friends for the night - and then when you find the same people turn up to each movie, they aren’t rent-a-friends but actual movie going friends. And eventually, you’ve accomplished things to solve the problem you first started out with: you now have friends you can call to see films or do something else related, and you still get to see films and talk about them with people who share your want to do so.

That was my first meet-up and I’m calling it a success. While it was brass monkey weather outside, and the bus ride home gave me shoulder/neck problems because I hunched into my three layers plus a weather-proof jacket and scarf, the day was a success and I find myself actually looking forward to the next one. It’s probably next Saturday, so it’s all good.

And that’s all the news that’s fit to print. Now to do all the usual Sunday things like cleaning, the washing and making work dinners for the coming week.

Peach and lube, people. Peach and lube.