2. Maggie and me…
Well, being on my own at WOW didn’t last long. Five minutes after scribbling those few pages in my Wow notebook I took my seat in the rather vast Perth Concert Hall auditorium. I smiled at the woman sitting next to me, as you do, assuming that she was with the woman sitting on the other side of her.
‘Isn’t this exciting!’, she said to me, ‘and just wonderful that it’s come to Perth!’
‘Yes! It’s really great — we so need more of these kind of events in Scotland, don’t we? My daughter is spoiled for choice down in London — I’m trying to take a leaf out of her book and go along to more of this sort of thing, but it’s so hard to find them up here! I really hope this kickstarts some more of the same’.
‘Oh I hope so too!’, she said animatedly, ‘I went along to the initial meetings that were looking for community input to WOW and the thing that I suggested was a weight-lifting workshop for women! I’ve come fairly recently to weight lifting and I just absolutely love it, it’s given me strength, changed my posture, given me more confidence in my ability…’
I looked at this gorgeous, slight, lively, beaming, somewhere-around-sixty-year-old woman beside me and smiled with gratitude. Of all the women I could’ve sat down beside it was one with a passion, enthusiasm and energy that I instantly loved. We introduced ourselves and I asked who she was here with.
‘I’m here on my own!’, Maggie said…
We kept on talking. We talked about the importance of doing new things at different stages of our lives, of not feeling stuck, of looking after ourselves as we muddle through the menopause so that we can savour better the sweetness beyond it, of keeping on learning, of using our voices…and we kept on doing just that, using our voices, until Jude Kelly (the founder of WOW) walked out on to the stage to introduce the launch event’s conversation guest, Nicola Sturgeon.
Maggie and I started talking again as soon as Nicola Sturgeon stopped. We shared how much we’d both loved the conversation on the stage and the questions from the young panel and the audience. We talked about how we need much more of this empowering talk for women. We talked about how fantastic it was to hear our First Minister speak on such a personal level, away from a political setting and how warm, genuine and empathic we found her to be. We talked about the fantastic questions from the audience and how inspired we’d both been by the answers (the one that stuck with me most was in answer to a 12 year old girl who said she loved maths and science but worried as she was the only female in her engineering class at school. Nicola applauded her, and encouraged her to pursue her passion, never to let ‘being the only girl’ be a reason to stop following your dreams: ‘We need more women like you! Dream big dreams and have the courage to follow them’)
We found ourselves nearing the concert hall exit so we stopped walking and carried on talking.
‘Let’s go for a drink!’, said Maggie. It was a no-brainer. We simply couldn’t have stopped the conversation yet, we were both loving spending time in each other’s company too much.
Maggie walked with me to my hotel and we sat in the bar and talked. We had a beautiful conversation. We spoke about our passions, we discovered many shared interests, we talked about things that make us angry, we opened up about some of the tough stuff we’re facing and challenges we’ve faced, we talked about the things that bring us joy and we prodded and provoked each others’ thoughts.
Basically, we had a bloody brilliant night.
It really is so very good to talk, especially when you find yourself in the glorious company of someone you feel connected to. Even if you have only just met…
So, thank you WOW. If it hadn’t have been for you I’d never have met Maggie.
And, even after only one evening’s conversation, my life’s already richer for having her in it…
(From my notebook, Friday 27 October, 11.15pm)
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