Maidenhead’s first Menopause Café met at Esquires Coffee on the High Street on Wednesday, 1 July, giving local residents a free place to talk about perimenopause and menopause without a stage, slides or expert panel. The session ran from 6.30pm to 8pm at Esquires Coffee Shop, 70 High St, Maidenhead SL6 1PY, and was open to people of all ages and genders.
The format was deliberate: no speakers, no presentations and no medical lecture, just tea, cake and conversation. That made the evening less like a public-health seminar and more like a low-pressure community drop-in, where people could listen, ask questions, compare symptoms and hear what has helped others. Kerry Farrell organised the event.
The Maidenhead event is part of a wider Menopause Café network founded by Rachel Weiss in Perth, Scotland, in 2017. Weiss drew on Kirsty Wark’s BBC programme Menopause and Me and the Death Cafe model when she started the first café in Perth that June with Gail Jack and Lorna Fotheringham. About 30 people turned up, and they asked for more events.
Menopause Café and NACWG figures put the total at 178 cafés across all four nations of the UK and one in Canada, with 47 of those in Scotland and total attendance there reaching 1,659 people. Scottish attendees ranged in age from 18 to 81, and 34 were male.
Hot flushes, changes in periods, mood changes, sleep problems, memory and concentration issues, vaginal dryness, palpitations, headaches, joint aches and recurrent UTIs are among menopause and perimenopause symptoms. Women from a Black ethnic background are more likely to have hot flushes that are severe and last longer. For otherwise healthy people aged 45 or over, menopause is usually identified clinically rather than with routine blood tests.
The Menopause Charity says one in 10 women have quit their jobs because of menopause and estimates 14 million working days are lost each year. The Fawcett Society found that one in 10 women who worked during the menopause left a job because of symptoms, while menopause can significantly affect career progression and retention.