Hello Miranda? It's me.

A Hotline and Other Stories.

Miranda July

’s All Fours singed my eyelashes and sent my eyebrows scurrying into my hairline. I coyly texted my girlfriends “Have you read All Fours?”. In person, an eye-bulging look told me they had. Together we guffawed at a book review in the Senior Living section of a magazine which listed the book under a batch of “delightful reads perfect to curl up with as the days start to grow shorter, with tales for children, romantics and realists”.

On the day of The Wobbly Middle podcast launch, I was in Piccadilly Circus and saw the billboard for the Miranda July hotline. Holy smokes, I thought. An actual sign.

I dialled but killed the call as it soon connected. Vanilla to her perimenopausal thriller. My anorak in London drizzle to her Prada X. What would I even have to say?

Then a friend lent me The Cost of Living, Deborah Levy’s memoir of her midlife post marriage break up. As I read the opening pages, there was a whoosh in my brain like a train rushing. This is a funny old time in our life for sure but women are writing their stories - and oh how they write!

I called the hotline and laughed.

I’ll see you at check-in.

The Wobbly Middle podcast is about women navigating the wobbly middle of their careers. If you’re in your own moment of menopausal mayhem, try our episode on navigating the hormonal highway with specialists, Drs Melanie Hacking and Susanne Hooper; or if there’s a problem you can see that needs fixing, listen to midwife turned femtech pioneer, Nina Van Schaick on her groundbreaking solution to improve maternal health outcomes in labour.