112: October 2025

Oct 07, 2025

Hello, welcome to Border Crossing issue one hundred and twelve, thank you for reading, I hope you’re keeping well and enjoying autumn.

Brighton/Sussex friends, a chance to hear me sing some old Chris T-T songs: on Sat 25th October I’m dropping into Goo Records’ all-dayer, LollopaGOOza 3 at the Hope & Ruin, for a half-hour solo spot. A final warm-up for my 100 Club show, though to be honest after Lost Evenings VIII in Edinburgh I do feel ready for it. Apart from the London show (long sold out) this’ll be my only airing of T-T songs live for the foreseeable future: after 15th November I’m climbing firmly back into the ‘retired’ box. Tickets

At Lost Evenings VIII, I joined a panel discussing long-form writing versus songwriting, with Frank Turner and Beans On Toast (YouTube link). I haven’t watched this back (dismorphia!) and did feel a bit entitled given my lack of actual publishing experience, however it was a total joy to sit with two old pals and chat shit about the craft of writing and general creativity. The moderator is Aarti Joshi from Go Radio, she did a great job.

Right, on we roll.

gems

1

If you’re reading this Tuesday 7th, it’s the 70th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s first reading of his poem ‘Howl’. Do yourself a favour, whether you dig verse or not, whether you’ve read it many times, or never… give it a go? Let the beast swallow you for a few minutes: here’s the complete text of ‘Howl’ via the Poetry Foundation.

2

Time Out Travel list their 39 ‘coolest neighbourhoods in the world’. It’s arbitrary, daft, but a fun read. Two British ‘hoods make the list, Camberwell (London) and Digbeth (Birmingham). However, Time Out also wrote up a UK ‘top 7 coolest neighbourhoods’, presumably built from long-list contenders of the above list, and I’m smug that our own London Road corner of Brighton makes it onto that chart.

3

The new episode of Angela Nagle’s audio newsletter Rocinante has Angela unpacking the ‘first modern novel’ Don Quixote Part 1 with guest Toby Shandy.

4

Al Jazeera’s explainer on legendary Kashmiri separatist Yasin Malik, who it turns out may have been an Indian intelligence asset all along. You don’t need to follow Kashmiri politics, this is a fascinating dive into how power works at the sharp end.

5

We’ll review it on Refigure pod but Long Story Short is an animated family dramedy on Netflix from the team behind BoJack Horseman. It uses time jumps to explore the lives of an American Jewish family over generations. It’s funny and often moving. Abbi Jacobson (Broad City), Ben Feldman (Superstore, Mad Men) and the great Lisa Edelstein are all terrific.

6

A fun episode of BBC podcast Arts & Ideas discusses ‘the good life’ — the concept, not the old telly show — with Matthew Sweet’s panel including Michael Rosen (whose new book is called Good Days), philosopher Dr Rachel Wiseman, research fellow Dr Sophie Scott-Brown, Balliol politics fellow Sudhir Hazareesingh (who wrote brilliant enslavement history Daring To Be Free) and Rev Fergus Butler-Gallie.

7

One of the OG email newsletters, way ahead of the curve and still brilliant after more than a decade, StoryThings’ newsletter has recently been spruced up.

8

While I’m thinking of Ginsberg, excellent Brighton writer and musicologist Daniel Spicer has a new poetry pamphlet out, A Year and A Day. It’s tricky to purchase, you need to contact him directly, but it’ll be well worth it, Daniel writes wonderfully. The link is to his Instagram post.

9

Zack Polanski’s new ‘piece to camera’ Green Party Political Broadcast is as good as they get. I’m fired up by Zack’s leadership, he’s galvanising Greens and the broader progressive diaspora, far more effectively (sadly) than Sultana and Corbyn have managed with their chaotic conflicting party plans. But also, thinking beyond idealism, objectively I suspect Zack is the single finest British media-performing politician we’ve seen in a generation, which is thrilling. He can talk to a big room. He smashes it on mainstream media’s false-binary soundbite shows, humbling the big beasts. And he nails this kind of big picture ‘facing the viewer’ stuff. Zack most reminds me of soaring social democrat Zohran Mamdani from the NYC mayoral race — and you probably know how that’s shaping up, despite the ugly distancing of the old guard of mainstream centrist Dems. Anyway, Zack’s great.

Hope.
Just a little, but still.