New friendships – Midlifechic overnighter 2025
Today you won’t be surprised to hear that I want to talk about our Midlifechic overnighter 2025 in Birmingham last weekend. But before I go into the detail let’s zoom out a bit and ask, “what’s the point of these get togethers?” As you know I’ve been tentatively organising meet-ups since November 2019. Each time I try to take them on a step or two, stretching the time together out a little longer and increasing the available slots without making them too big. The reason is that I, and most people who come along, seem to find them quite magical – and that has nothing to do with me, it’s all about you, the women who read this blog. Other than my school reunions I don’t know of any other time when a group of bright, positive midlife women come together with the sole intention of being friends and having great conversations. On the night I foolishly described it as being like tinder and had to quickly say that I didn’t mean the hook-up app – what I meant was that 40 strangers walk into a room and the conversation catches fire straightaway. There’s no awkward chitchat, people quickly get into their life stories and when you have a group of women who’ve been on the planet for 50-ish years there isn’t a single one that isn’t interesting.
I love the warmth of these evenings but there’s more to them than that. It’s hard for me to explain what I get from them but this is the closest analogy I can find. When the boys were very small, Mal was still busy working at Selfridges all week and then he played rugby which took up the whole of Saturday as well as evenings with training. Every so often he’d say, ‘take a day for yourself and do whatever you want.’ He assumed I’d want to meet up with friends or go and have a massage or something. However (and I know I’m going to reveal my absolute geekery here) what I longed for was to free my mind and body from the constant demands of other people. So I used to head to the bookshop Borders (do you remember it?) where they had cosy armchairs in every corner as well as a Starbucks which was an exciting new concept then. You were encouraged to pick up books and sit down and read them so that’s what I did, for hours… I wandered through the departments finding books on all kinds of different things and escaped into them for the whole afternoon. Spending time with readers reminds me of that – everyone I speak to tells a completely different story of a life I haven’t lived and yet there’s so much I can relate to. It’s almost like jumping into a different body for a while.
And that, I think, is the beauty of building new friendships in midlife. It doesn’t make your lifelong friends any less important – we all know the ease of shorthand that comes with someone you’ve known forever. But when you hear someone else’s story told from this midpoint and share your own it sparks off so many new ideas and gives you new perspectives on what you might do next. So I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to have so many of you who are willing to meet up because let’s face it, it isn’t easy at this stage of life to find new friends that you instantly get on with and that’s what we have here. We’re all completely different because we’ve been alive in different circumstances for 50-ish years. And yet as thinking women we’ve lived with purpose (well as much as possible while life’s been rolling its punches) and so we have a lot to say.
So I want to say the most enormous thank you to everybody who took a deep breath and decided to come along. I know it isn’t easy, almost everyone I spoke to told me how apprehensive they’d been… and how hard it was to explain to friends and family where they were going and why. Those of you who were there know that I was nervous too, as well as feeling responsible for giving you a good time I also hoped to give you something to think about and thank goodness I had my friend Claudia to help me with the fireside chat… as well as quite a few of you who joined in. I’m really glad that some of you felt moved by what we had to say about midlife – I hope that every event will give you a little something to think about as well as a lot of laughs. The conversations that happen at these events are confidential so I won’t go into the ones that I was part of but for anyone who couldn’t come along, this is how the weekend went.
Friday – Midlifechic overnighter 2025
I took the opportunity to go down to Birmingham the night before because it gave me a chance to catch up with my first ever Midlifechic reader friends, Anne and Gillian, who along with their husbands won the competition to spend a weekend in France with Mal and me back in 2019. As Midlifechic readers do we gelled immediately back then as you can see from this old photo.
Gillian and I arrived first and checked into our rooms at Malmaison Birmingham which was, as always, a cool urban place to stay with huge rooms – everybody commented on those! It was also perfectly located for a weekend in the city…
… you have all of the canalside nightlife quite literally on the doorstep…
…plus Selfridges of course, the last project that Mal and I worked on before we left. Can you believe it was one heck of a battle to get our Norman Foster building approved because Birmingham didn’t like it?! And I suppose I should mention that Harvey Nichols is right next to Malmaison but I know which one I’d choose!
Anyway Gillian and I headed out into a blissfully warm city to wait for Anne…
… we may have had a cocktail or two… this was Gillian’s idea as we paid tribute to Marco Pierre White and my goodness I look exactly like my mum when she wasn’t pleased!
(wearing Cos dress SS23; Stories sandals SS22)
Those are the only pictures I have of that night because Anne arrived and we had lots to catch up on… we met up with Claudia for a nightcap… and then went to bed and I lay awake worrying about the day to come!
Saturday morning – Midlifechic overnighter 2025
Coming to terms with prosopagnosia
Why was I worrying? Well it’s time for me to come clean about something. Obviously there was the fact that 40 people were making the effort to come to an event that I’d organised and I didn’t for one second undervalue the fact that they were giving me their precious time. However I realise now that I have to tell you about a condition that I struggle with – prosopagnosia. It used to be known as face blindness and thankfully people are starting to understand it better now that celebrities who live with it such as Joanna Lumley, Stephen Fry and Brad Pitt are speaking up about it. Although it isn’t often talked about it’s recently been discovered that 2% of the population have prosopagnosia.
It’s something I’ve always had to a degree but it’s become far worse since menopause. Tests show me that I have it moderately so I don’t have a problem recognising people I know well. However it’s one of the reasons that I don’t watch a lot of TV because I don’t recognise characters until we’re well into the story. I find it difficult in business social situations because I can sit and chat to somebody for ages at something like a business lunch and then not recognise them in the bar ten minutes later. Something like that happens when the conversation has been general rather than memorable. Sadly it means that I’m often described as aloof because I can easily walk past somebody without recognising them so they think I’m ignoring them. You can imagine how difficult it was with mums in the school playground and it often meant that I hung back a bit. If somebody I didn’t know well came over to talk to me my brain would be scrambling to work out who they were and so conversation could feel stilted and awkward while I was busy doing that.
I’ve developed ways of coping with it over the years. If somebody tells me a personal story I’ll attach it to their face and remember them easily. If we’re somewhere together Mal will open the conversation with ‘you remember X don’t you Nikki?’ And I’ll often clock what people are wearing – but that’s where it went a bit wrong last weekend because even though I’d spent the evening with you all, in the morning you were wearing something else. I know I reintroduced myself to some of you because I spotted the slight confusion on your faces and I’m really sorry – as soon as I could rewind to the conversation we’d had I caught up with who you were again. I’d thought that I was getting better at managing it so I didn’t bring name badges but in hindsight I should have done.
It’s quite a daunting thing to live with, it’s more than just being bad with faces and I’ve come to realise that it’s why I enjoy things like festivals so much because I can be very sociable without having to remember anybody – if we do cross paths with someone again Mal just gives me a nudge. One of you questioned over dinner whether I really am the introvert that I say I am and it made me wonder – perhaps I’ve always just shied away from people because of this fear of not recognising them and causing offence. Anyway I’ve explained it now and I’ll add a reminder to events in future. Hopefully those of you who’ve met me know that once we’ve had a meaningful conversation either in person or via the comments then I’ll attach all of that to you and I’ll know your face.
I’m doing my bit to raise awareness of prosopagnosia so if you know somebody who often says, “I’m really bad with faces” then please do let them know that it’s an increasingly recognised condition. Just knowing that I’m not alone and it isn’t my fault has really helped me recently, it makes me feel less socially inept and so it builds my confidence. You might be able to help somebody else with it too.
Anyway back to Saturday morning. Claudia and I met up with reader Elaine who has done so much to help us organise this event. She’s a proud Brummie and she was keen to take us for a stroll around some of the sights that included Birmingham’s impressive library – the biggest in Europe and a really lovely, airy place filled with books – I could happily have spent the day in there. There’s also a room dedicated to local boy William Shakespeare which was unfortunately closed that day but it makes it an even more interesting place to visit.
And of course Birmingham was a shrine to another local boy – Ozzy Osbourne. His wasn’t my kind of music but it was moving to see the dedicated fans who’d come to pay tribute to him.
Saturday afternoon – Midlifechic overnighter 2025
On Saturday afternoon we had special Midlifechic group tours of Birmingham’s Back to Back houses. They’re a National Trust conservation project showing how people used to live in the urban centre and the guides bring to life the stories of the actual families who lived in the houses. Our group was led by our very own Elaine who is one of the guides. Elaine lived in a Back to Back until the age of ten which made it extra special because she was able to give us so much added insight.
The interiors have all been recreated according to the family who lived there. I found it absolutely fascinating, especially when I compared it to my own family’s background. There are two farmhouses that are still lived in by members of my family and they’ve barely changed over the years but mine is very much a rural history, deep in the Yorkshire Dales. Unlike the Brummies my ancestors had endless space but they battled with wuthering isolation. The contrast with this deeply urban life which was cramped but also strong on community living was polar. It made me wonder just how much our genes carry from our past, I know I have my farming background to thank for my not very dainty body structure but is my struggle to recognise faces rooted in my ancestors’ isolation?
So here we are, the three amigas… me, Claudia and Elaine squinting in the dazzling sunshine just before we headed off to prepare everything back at Malmaison for the evening to come.
(wearing M&S linen waistcoat SS23; Boden linen trousers SS23; Stories sandals SS22)
Saturday evening – Midlifechic overnighter 2025
And so we kicked off at 5.15pm with some readers happy to take part in this photo before the event began. You can already feel the warm energy and these women hadn’t even met yet. I love the fact that 40 of you were brave enough to come along with the sole intention of meeting likeminded others.
We gathered for a glass of fizz and the conversations began…
… there was very little chitchat – everybody was animated…
… and to my joy there was so much colour, I’ve never seen so many vibrantly dressed women all gathered together, it was like a forest full of beautiful hummingbirds.
After a while we moved through to our private dining room and Claudia and I began what we call a fireside chat. You all know that Claudia (Bradby) and I became friends through this blog and she is one of my all-time favourite people to talk to. Like me she’s happy to be very open about her life when she’s in a trusted circle like this so we didn’t plan what we were going to say. I knew it would just flow…
… we chatted about the upsides of midlife which can often be funny…
… and it was a relief to see a lot of heads nodding around the room…
… we also talked about some quite personal things because you can when you’re in a group of supportive women like this…
… everybody relates to the things we all go through.
And then we had a break so that everyone could play with Claudia’s jewellery. It’s her 25th anniversary this year, that’s 25 years of running a small, woman owned business with all of the energy and persistence that that requires. As you know, I wear her jewellery almost all of the time not only because she’s my friend but because I love the fact that there’s a relatable story behind every piece she makes. She’d asked me to name my five most worn pieces which was hard, it was like Desert Island Discs but they are the Coco Epee earrings and Mermaid hoops that you can see being admired here.
… along with the Love Knot necklace, the World is Your Oyster necklace and her pearl bangles. The exciting news is that we’ve been busy designing a very special range together which we previewed on the evening but I’ll tell you more about that when it’s ready. Don’t forget that you get an insider’s 20% off with this month’s code NIKKIAUGUST20.
Claudia had brought along every single piece that she makes so that people could play around and work out how to layer them.
She was on hand with advice for everyone who had questions…
… and lots of people made up their own combinations – see how good this classic pearl string looks on Janice when layered over a chunkier piece.
And then when we’d finished with the jewellery playground, dinner was served. I should say another huge thank you to Malmaison here because they came up with a great solution for enabling people to move around if they wanted to. They were also incredibly patient with our group of 40 very loquacious women who weren’t always paying attention to the questions they asked. I moved table with each course so I was able to chat briefly with most people although the tables were quite big so I’m really sorry if I missed you. These events are always oversubscribed and it’s difficult to know where the cut-off line should be, I think I’ll make the next one a bit smaller so that I know I’ll be able to get to know everyone there.
And so the evening went on with lots of talk and lots of laughter, a small group of us even carried on to the bar and I’m pleased to say that there was dancing! In fact as I headed off to bed at 1.30am one of the bar staff came over to thank me, saying it was the best evening they’d had in there for ages – as we started to dance so did people sitting at other tables and so the joy flowed over.
You see the thing is that real, solid friendships can be made at this stage of life if you can just find the right people. Midlifechic has brought me relationships that have real depth and even with people like these two who have busy lives and live far away, they really count. One of the topics on the evening was all about midlife friendships, how you often find yourself drifting away from some of the work or school playground relationships that you thought would last a lifetime because life moves on and you all change. So now’s the time to add new people who are on the same wavelength as you – and this is where you can find them. I’m going to keep on holding these get togethers and I’ll do my best to learn from each one and make them better each time.
(wearing dress – now half price in the sale; Zara shoes AW18)
Everybody left with a goody bag containing a pair of pearl drop earrings from Claudia, a summer clutch bag from me and a full sized Vitamin C serum which was an incredibly generous gift from from Balance Me – another wonderful small brand founded and led by midlife sisters Clare and Rebecca Hopkins whose focus is always on gentle, natural skincare. Oh and there was also a selection of chocolates from Birmingham’s very own Cadbury’s – but I ate them before I remembered to take a photo (sorry Elaine!).
I’ll say once again that it was such a joy to be in a room that was filled with warmth and supportiveness. There was no sense of judgement or criticism – no sense that anyone was too big… small… young… old… or any of the other criteria that sometimes come into play when groups of women meet. I know that not all of you are able to come along to these events but I wish you could and I want to thank you for the sense of friendship that you give me here, even if you do just sit and read quietly on a Friday night. Our old friends are precious but our new ones can be too – Claudia and I hadn’t even met ten years ago and now there’s no subject we can’t discuss.
The next Midlifechic event will be completely different and I’m busy planning it now. It will take place on the edge of the Lake District at the end of January and I’ll tell you more about it soon. Don’t forget we also have a merry band of readers going to Colombia next September to spend a Somoloco week with Mal and me learning salsa dancing as well as exploring Medellin. We have a mix of couples and sola travellers, enough for the trip to go ahead but there’s room for a few more if you’d like to join us for what will be the experience of a lifetime with a warm friendly group. Here are the details again along with the passcode to the Zoom meeting we held for people who were interested.
Come to Colombia with us in 2026!
If you’re interesting in joining our small group trip to Colombia next year (21st – 27th September), here are the details.
The cost for the trip is $2950 (approx £2,290* ) for a couple or $1950 (approx £1,510*) for solo travellers. This includes a private salsa teacher per booking, accommodation, a welcome dinner, 2 social dancing nights in clubs in Medellin, a musicality class, airport pick-up and drop-off and all credit card fees. Please note that flights, food and optional excursions are excluded. The cost of living in Medellin is very reasonable though.
For more detail on where we’re staying and what we’ll be doing, here’s the link to the Zoom meeting. In it I go through what to expect if you decide to join us and there are questions from other readers too. If you’d like to know anything more just email me and I’ll be happy to answer any of your questions – I know it’s quite a big leap to make so no question is silly. Just remember that every year that goes by takes us closer to the time when an adventure like this will no longer be possible. So don’t just keep on booking ‘pleasant’ holidays telling yourself that you’ll do something more exciting ‘one day’ – before you know it it’ll be too late. Come on, join us – live your life!
View Zoom Meeting Recording here
Passcode: hfg?+gl3
Disclosure: New friendships – Midlifechic overnighter 2025 is not a sponsored post
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