Have I already mentioned that I’m doing a Masters equivalent course currently? It’s work related and for it, every week I leave work early to travel to a place 45 minutes drive from me and sit in a room for 7 hours with a group of 20 somethings.

When I first joined the course I thought ‘oh god’ at the ages of everyone else. I felt like I wasn’t going to fit in, that I’d stick out, that I wouldn’t have things in common. But there’s 12 of us on this course. One man and 11 women.

And can I just say these women are all fucking incredible?

There’s something so wholesome about being around them. They give me energy, they give me joy, they make me happy. Every week that I’m there something happens that just makes me endlessly smile.

Last week as I was walking in two different people said to the youngest woman there ‘your hair looks great’ and she positively beamed. She said thank you and that nobody at work even noticed that she’d had her hair done and actually everybody noticed straight off as soon as she arrived.

The week before when hair came up, I’d said I was growing out mine but I hated this in-between phase where it isn’t short and it isn’t long and just feels scraggly and they told me to ‘trust the process’ and gave me compliments.

There are women there who are getting married this year and we’ve talked about flowers and dresses and venues. There is one woman older than me who has a daughter going to prom and we’ve shared the best places for dresses, for shoes, for accessories.

We’ve talked about going to the gym and getting into Hyrox. We talk about the food we cook, one woman asked for advice on how to ask for a raise. The women have all complimented each other on our coats, our trousers, asked where we’ve gotten our shoes. We give each other encouragement on our assignments, advice about what to do in tricky work situations.

This kind of friendship and fellowship is the reason I’m doing this course face to face and not online. You can’t put a price on this sort of interaction on a weekly basis. For the next two years.

Women are incredible. And going to this course every week makes me yearn for a better network of women friends like this.