122: March 2026

Hello, I hope you’re feeling good, getting least a hint of spring, welcome onboard Border Crossing issue #122 and thank you very much for reading and supporting my writing.

What a beautiful morning here, the BBC Weather said 100% it would rain, which turned out to be wronger than Beeb usually is (except on global geopolitics).

I’m about to head out on a Jim Bob UK tour. Some dates are long sold out but there are a few tix left for Oxford, I think Glasgow, Manchester’s got a handful, Birmingham (wtaf?!) and Southampton. If you’re coming to a show, I’m stoked to say that the final boxes of Chris T-T 12” vinyl reissues will be available on Jim’s merch stall. I’m very grateful to Jim and manager Marc for kindly offering this — now I just need to make a sexy flyer or something, in time to let people know about it.

Of course, if you’re coming out and spot me, please say hello.

This Friday 13th March, prices for my creativity consultations are going up, the day the tour starts (my brain just compartmentalised it that way for some reason!) so if you might want a conversation with me about your creative life and artistic practice book in before that date to secure the current rate. Low income discounts will remain but the overall basic rate is going up a fair bit.

Right, let’s get going.

xx

gems

1

David Bramwell’s dazzlingly great Adventures In Nutopia podcast returns for series four, after a couple of years away. Vivid, provocative, full-production chunks of seamlessly made counterculture social history radio. I’ve written about him before and he’s a friend but David is a peerless storyteller, one of the finest out there. It’s quite bonkers that this series is not a famous BBC, NPR or Audible mainstay. Really, they don’t have the stones: the first episode is one of the loveliest preconception-overturning explainers of anarchism that I’ve heard. David Graeber is applauding from beyond the grave.

2

Another terrific audio show: the third series just launched of Molly Naylor’s creativity conversation pod Making Trouble, with Josie Long as her first guest. Funnily enough, til now I’ve only listened to occasional spot episodes of this show. Yet when I do, it’s always a super-fascinating chat. Then over the past two months a few people recommended it, and also I think the show’s promo account followed me on Insta and I followed it back. Finally, a few weeks ago (purely by chance) I caught Molly doing a poetry set in Winchester that was outstanding. She’s a very compelling performer and wears it lightly. So now I’m all in, on tour I’ll be catching up with all the episodes I’ve missed.

3

Yashraj Sharma’s investigation for Al Jazeera unpacks how Modi’s India has adopted an ‘Israeli model’ for its treatment of Indian-administered Kashmir. (this was published before the US/Israeli attacks on Iran)

4

The second novel by Hester Musson, The Night Hag, is out this week via HarperCollins. Another beautifully realised nineteenth century horror mystery, actually it leans harder into the horror than her excellent debut The Beholders. I’d never usually link to Women’s Hour but Hester went on this week to talk about her book and she’s great, from about nineteen minutes in.

5

Andrea Arnold’s 2011 version of ‘Wuthering Heights’ is on the Channel 4 player.

6

Faith-driven activists Sam Walton and Daniel Woodhouse reflect in The Friend (the Quaker magazine) about the time in 2017 they broke onto an airbase to try to stop war crimes — and were acquitted on the legal grounds that their ‘crime’ was in service of preventing a greater crime.

7

Ben Murray has built Proust FM, a free website where you can listen to Proust’s monumental classic In Search Of Lost Time being read to you, permanently on a 24/7 loop, in the classic English translation of C. K. Scott Moncrieff. Drop in wherever the narrative is at, or begin at the beginning, or pick any chapter to start from. In all seriousness, I may dive in because I got three books in, a few years ago, when Ben and I attempted and sadly abandoned a planned chapter-by-chapter Proust readalong podcast.

8

Brighton poet, author, improviser and jazz/world music critic Daniel Spicer has published an account of his solo trip to Puducherry on the Bay of Bengal over new year. Sad but hopeful, Spicer writes beautifully: spiritual, vulnerable, deeply personal yet vividly present in his surroundings. It’s out in a very limited A5 paper zine format and a small section was also published in Songlines magazine. Here’s Daniel’s Instagram — get in touch with him for a copy.

potato gems

• Great story in Science Daily: researchers have proved that more than 10,000 years ago, ancient indigenous people of the American south-west deliberately carried an early species of wild potato (‘four corners’, solanum janesii) vast distances — from Utah right down into Mexico — for more widespread propagation. It was used both for food and medicinal ceremonies, so probably highly prized. This was extremely early light-touch human intervention in cultivation, which would gradually become domestication and agriculture. It would shape eating habits and culture for thousands of years.

•

get in touch

email me: chris@christt.com
Instagram: cjthorpetracey

always there

• Check out my Double Chorus newsletter on songwriting and the music business. It’s irregular, more casual and shorter than this one.

• Sort out your ‘art life balance’ with a conversation to help reset your creativity, check out my face-to-face sessions.

• Listen to Refigure podcast, the bitesize arts review show I make with Rifa.

• Two classic Chris T-T albums London Is Sinking (2003) and 9 Red Songs (2005) for the first time on 12” vinyl: limited stocks still available.

• Later albums made for Xtra Mile Recordings, Love Is Not Rescue (2010), The Bear (2013), 9 Green Songs (2016) and Best of Chris T-T (double CD, 2017) are now available on CD with limited stocks on Bandcamp.

• Check out the Border Crossing Press shop.

• My Pact Coffee discount code is CHRIS-A8UKQG. Sign up for beautiful coffee bean delivery, use this code, you get £5 off and I get £5 off a bag.

Thanks again. Please look after yourself and your people.

all my love,
Chris
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