Hiya, welcome to the forum โบ
Someone was in a similar position as you regarding CM, I think it was on a thread yesterday, there was some helpful advice that you might find interesting, you’ll have to look back through the threads to find it though.
Similarly some folk were chatting about a meet up in Essex, again look back through the threads, it’s not the easiest thing to navigate through to find things but soon gingerbread will have some major changes so hopefully that will be addressed.
A couple of threads that are almost chat rooms are called Friday night social and the other is called the book club, both are active so if that’s your thing they are definitely worth looking up.
All the best
Mark