I'm delighted to say that it's finally hot and sunny in our part of the North West. I suspect it's down to me and the fact that I'd given up on the sun ever appearing so I'd started ordering clothes for the chilly days we've been having. And have you noticed how many brands are fast-tracking into autumn (or Pre-Fall as the Americanisation creeps in) with their latest drops? The heatwave's given faster sell-through on summer [...]
I was planning to bring you inspiration from my annual birthday reflections today but I've been down with the virus that everyone seems to have all week. Is it just me or do these bugs seem to hit much harder since lockdown? Anyway in over eleven years of blogging I've never surrendered before but my head is so thick that the words just aren't coming. I'll be back next Friday with a try-on and then birthday thoughts the week after [...]
Ok so that's enough of the heavy thinking posts for a while, let's take our very first 2025 look at some easy wardrobe updates. It's so lovely to see the first, very early glimpses of spring. As soon as Christmas was over we used to wait for my dad to start saying "we just have to make it through to the second Sunday in February when we'll be able to have tea at five o'clock with the lights off." And [...]
At last, I'm breathing out a bit - looking back through Mal's camera roll I realise we haven't had a Midlife lately for ages so let's have a catch-up (and I warn you it's a long pot of tea/glass of wine one). There are times when I really don't feel like having my photograph taken but in the long run, it's great that he snaps away when we're out and about because it gives me a record of ordinary times [...]
Wow it's back to it this week - straight from summer into a very autumnal feeling north but I'm happy to be here. We've done a lot of travelling recently and so the thought of six months at home feels good. I have no plans to talk about our Greek Island Hopping adventure now, it was always intended to be a private logging off. It was relaxed, low key and low budget - a treat to read, eat, sleep, [...]
The weeks seem to be flying past at the moment so I thought it was time to take a mid-season pause and have a catch up with an autumn midlife lately. I've found random photos of various moments on our camera rolls so here's what's been going on in the background while I've been talking about travel and new season clothes. Autumn midlife lately - empty nesting Towards the end of September it was finally time for the youngest [...]
It's a bit of a different post today. Since the Telegraph article I've had quite a few women get in touch to ask me how I manage to feel confident at this age when it's so easy to feel that everything's in decline. As regular readers know, back in 2014 I'd lost all of my confidence and so I deliberately decided to work on it. At the time I called it 'getting my groove back' and although that sounds cheesy, [...]
As we approached summer this year I thought it was going to feel like a long one. Without the rush of a big family holiday to prepare for I imagined it being languid, like the summers you read about in interwar novels where people spent long, limpid days at home in the shade with a book. And of course it isn't turning out that way at all, it still feels as though time's rushing by and weeks are eaten up [...]
It's been ages since we've talked about beauty and I've had a few people asking me recently how I keep my skin glowing in summer. Well not very much changes in my routine, I have favourites that I buy again and again because they work. I've been invited to test quite a few new beauty products over the last months and I have strict terms for accepting samples. Brands have to understand that I will only recommend their new launches [...]
Another week over and it's certainly been an interesting one. In this post I'm finally following up on my promise to do my HRT update - going private in the UK but first I just want to refer back to last week. I think a lot of us are starting to look ahead tentatively, wondering what life is going to be like when we start to emerge from lockdown. Your replies to my question last week about how you were [...]
Happy Friday everyone, that's the most difficult week of January over with and even I have to confess that I've found it trying. It began with Blue Monday and then we were battered by Storm Christoph - I'm hoping that none of you are in the worst hit areas, extreme weather really isn't what we need at the moment. Once again today's post is a mix of things that have caught my eye or sprung to mind while I've been [...]
Hello and happy Tuesday everyone. I'm back after a couple of days off last week when as you might remember, Mr MC and I intended to make a plan for the next few months. We wanted to focus mostly on our business but of course like most people's, our work and life is so closely interwoven that we needed to consider everything else as well. So, we sat down with coffee and notepads and after some drumming of fingers we [...]
And so we find ourselves at the beginning of June - that's more than two full months of lockdown and yet I still find myself circling back to the initial reaction of pure shock every now and then. In other ways though it's become a way of life and there's something comforting about living in a bubble where you don't have the friction of everyday life. It seems as though we're going to have to start emerging soon though and [...]
Pandemic diaries Hello from a suddenly chilly north of England. Just as I'd got into the swing of summer dressing it's behaved true to form and gone the other way - I've just had to break off to go and put some socks on when I thought I'd finished with them until October. I suppose it reflects everything else that's going on because I'm finding I just can't plan ahead for more than a week at a time at the [...]
Lockdown continues - how are you feeling? Hello everyone, I shot myself in the foot a bit on Tuesday with a recap on what we'd been doing so today I thought I'd focus more on how this is feeling instead. Obviously these are just my personal reflections so I'm hoping that in the spirit of social diary, you'll add some of your thoughts in the comments at the end. What I'm keen to log is: as the lockdown continues - [...]
Hello everybody, I hope hope you're all ok out there. We'd never have imagined a week like the one we've just had would we and who knows where we go from here? For now, I'm going to try to keep up with a weekly coronavirus update even if it's just as a kind of social diary to log how this bolt from the blue affected an ordinary family. So here we go - Coronavirus diaries - lockdown week 1. Coronavirus [...]
For the last couple of weeks I've been writing two potential versions of this post in my head. You see on an ordinary morning just after we got back from France, I discovered a marble-sized lump in my breast. My immediate reaction was denial. I told myself it was just the edge of a rib but then I asked Mr MC to check and I could see by his face that it wasn't. Just like that life began to spin [...]
Before we hit the party season full on, I just want to tell you about a project I've been taking part in since summer. You may remember that all the way back in June, I seemed to be travelling up and down to London every week. At the time I mentioned that one of the trips was based around something scientific and as you've probably gathered, the picture above was taken on the day - I can't believe I had [...]
Hello! We're back from our amazing adventure in Transylvania and I have so much to tell you. However today I must crack on and catch up with the work that I've missed so I'm forcing myself to stay away from the photos until I have more time. In the meantime, I have a post about how to keep your complexion glowing in midlife. I've been putting it together since I included this picture a couple of weeks ago and was bombarded [...]
I'm following on from my post about leather leggings with a focus on a different type of trouser. You see when I was down in London last week, I gambled on not having to stand up too much in my consultancy sessions. For once, I travelled light without 'street shoes' in my bag. It misfired. I was working with a larger team than expected and so I had to stand to enable everyone to hear (and see) me. We were [...]
On Tuesday I mentioned that I've been challenged to get going with a new midlife health and fitness plan. I have committed to do it until January and today I'm going to tell you more about it. Before I do, I'm just going to cover the reasons why I'm doing it with a quick recap. I have hit an absolute exercise trough. Long term readers know about the car accident I had in December 2014. It wasn't a serious one [...]
As we wait for the sales to finish and the new season stock to arrive, I'm covering some new topics. Back in January, we were discussing midlife symptoms - both physical and emotional and since then, I've been keeping an eye open for solutions to some of the problems that were raised. The results of the survey that we did showed that 27% of Midlifechic readers are having problems with thinning midlife hair. It isn't something that I have experienced [...]
As a break from the summer sale madness, today I thought I'd talk to you about my new glasses. I've been aware that I need some for quite a while but, in the same way that some people dread going to the dentist, I dread the opticians - so I always put it off. The reason for this is that my mum had Macular Degeneration and was nearly blind towards the end of her life. Watching her lose her sight [...]
As you can see, I'm talking about something completely different today. A little while ago I mentioned that I have been having some treatment for a phobia and that I would discuss it when it was completed. Well today's the day. So, let me tell you more about it. My phobia is 'ornophobia' or a fear of birds. It not only covers the idea of them flapping around me or even being in my path when I walk through a [...]
So here they are - the results! Over 2000 of you took part in the Physical symptoms of Midlife survey so we have some really interesting and relevant information here. As somebody who hates maths, I am always surprised by how much I love data. I suppose because of my marketing background I have learned how to delve into it and interpret it. Every so often the numbers will tell you that something you had always assumed to be true is [...]
I have been overwhelmed by your enthusiastic and very thought provoking responses to my Midlife in the twenty-tens post. It seems as though I have hit upon something that we all want to discuss in more depth. As you know, the last post focused on the cognitive side of midlife, our changing mindset. As promised, I am now moving on to the chronological aspect or rather the physical symptoms of midlife that most people say they are experiencing. One approach would be [...]
Hello and Happy New Year! I know I'm supposed to be full of perky new year's resolutions but I tend to see September as more of a time to start afresh than January. For me the decorations are down, the middle son has already gone back to school and this morning, I faced the scales which led me to a moment of self loathing because I've put on half a stone. However, when I look back at the fantastic Christmas we've had, I [...]
Quite a few of you have been in touch to ask for a Coolsculpting progress update. If you're a new reader, Coolsculpting is a non-invasive way of getting rid of the stubborn patches of fat that build up particularly on women's bodies, although men can be treated too. This is my original review of the Coolsculpting procedure. A warning that today's post contains pictures of my bare tummy - you may want to come back to it later (or just avoid it completely) [...]
You’ll remember me mentioning that a couple of weeks ago I went down to London to meet Midlifechic reader Sarah Baldwin. Sarah got in touch before Christmas because she’d been reading my blog for a while and she wanted to tell me about her job as a Lead Therapist at Attune Clinic in London. As we were chatting, she started to tell me about Coolsculpting which is one of the treatments she offers. She very kindly offered me the opportunity to [...]
Well I'm delighted that so many of you are embracing Project Happier - everyone I talk to seems to like the idea of making small improvements rather than huge changes. The trouble is that it's hard to keep change going. We're only in the second week of January and I can already feel myself being pulled into the Slough of Despond - not the literal Pilgrim's Progress sense of guilt for my sins (I don't have much time to sin) but [...]
I hope you've had a good week, it's going to be a post of two parts today. First of all a style fix for those who prefer this part of my blog and then we'll move on to the next instalment of the work life balance discussion that we've been having over the last few months. At last I'm starting to get my head around Autumn 2015 style for women over 40. There's no doubt that skinny jeans and tailored crops [...]
Ok, I warned you, it's a new year and we need to reassess where we've got to in this midlife journey of ours. Quite a few of you have sent me emails over Christmas talking about body confidence and weight loss; some have even asked for a kick up the bum. So this is a bossy post. I'm only going to do this once but before we get distracted with new season dressing (and I do have the new colours [...]
