124: May 2026
Hello, welcome to Border Crossing episode 124, I hope you’re thriving, and getting a chance to enjoy the weather. As always, thank you very much for reading my stuff and a very warm welcome onboard if you’re a newbie. Very grateful to have you here.
Please don’t forget to vote in the UK local elections today, if you can. Where I live there’s no election, we get ours at a different time. But obviously I’m hoping the Greens do super-well across the country, to help inject economic and ecological justice and common sense into the heart of policymaking and to send as loud a message as possible to Starmer’s government about its scary nutsack authoritarianism.
I’m no birder. But yesterday, my friend Charlie of Birdsong Academy took me on a last minute emergency birdwatch. We’d been due to meet for a pint in Lewes, when Charlie heard about an extremely rare sighting on the river Ouse, near the village of Southease a few miles away. So we re-routed our catch-up to walk up the river and what do you know, dear reader, we saw it. The first Spotted Sandpiper in Sussex for more than fifty years and I got to see it with my eyes. Not just a glimpse either: this gorgeous little thing (long beak, fluttery wading vibes, white spots all over its breast) was pottering about for ages on the riverbank, right beside us (and even better, mostly no other birders around). An American bird very far from home. Apparently — almost impossibly — there’s actually a pair of them, though we only saw one. Also spotted whimbrel, a stonechat and an excellent heron, plus Charlie had brought some chocolate flapjacks, before missing our train back to town. I’ll write about this properly another time.
This summer, for a while I’ll be based in beautiful Berlin, somewhere between Kreuzberg and Tempelhof. Mainly, I’ll try to finish some bigger bits of creative work. But if you’re in (or nearby) Berlin and you’d fancy a chat for any reason, please get in touch. And of course, if you’re interested in a creativity consultation or you know somebody who might benefit, give me a nudge.
I do also have a bunch of (normal, UK) spots available now for creativity consultation so if you’re potentially interested, let’s chat.
Right, enough sales-ing, let’s get going.
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gems
1
Brighton Fringe is carnage this year and hasn’t got it together (or probably just can’t afford) to produce a printed brochure, which is very frustrating. But still hundreds of fascinating performers and artists are descending on our city through May. The most useful preview of fringe stuff I’ve found (and a solid explanation of the organisation’s recent travails) is this excellent full-length preview by James Walsh, in his All The Things We Did And Didn’t Do newsletter.
2
Patrick Radden Keefe’s new book London Falling uses a haunting, enthralling true crime mystery as a Trojan horse to explore the deep corruption of modern London.
3
Tamsin Bishton writes beautifully on ghosts, grief and moving home in ‘The Ancient Road to Hope’ for her terrific personal newsletter It Was Never Just You And Me.
4
A couple of weeks ago we saw Naomi Wood’s phenomenal spoken word show Monster at The Old Market and I can’t recommend this highly enough, Naomi has created a fascinating, complex, deeply personal excavation of what we fear in ourselves. It’s both laugh-out-loud funny and darkly enveloping — a killer show, with the words augmented by movement and cunning props. It’s also a true solo show — Naomi is writing, directing and performing alone. It’s made me think a lot about what really constitutes a ‘pure’ solo show, so I might write about that another time. She brings it back to Brighton Fringe on 29th May at the Caravansarai (this doesn’t need my help to sell tickets, they’ll fly out, so don’t hang about) then over summer she’s in Leeds, Bristol, London and Nottingham. I also interviewed Naomi about Monster for The Old Market Podcast.
5
Unexpectedly honest and powerful This Cultural Life interview with the great photographer Don McCullin, storied war photographer until (out of sheer trauma, it seems) he switched to shooting bleak, empty landscapes near his home. I don’t think This Cultural Life’s John Wilson is an especially agile interviewer, locked into typical mollifying BBC tone, always seeking the comfortable centre-ground (emotionally as much as politically), however McCullin’s unflinching pessimism and open shame about his earlier life’s work is deeply truthful and eye-opening.
6
If you have an appetite for a full-length, sincere, quite analytical deep dive into the making of Taskmaster with Alex and Greg, their interview with Jesse David Fox for Vulture’s ‘Good One’ podcast is perfect.
7
The first ever UK major solo show for seventeenth century Spanish master Francisco de Zurbarán just opened at the National Gallery. His work is astonishingly good: here’s the short YouTube doc they’ve made about him and here, my friend Ben of Bite My Truant Pen highlights nine essential Zurbarán paintings. This exhibition is right up top of my summer art to-do list.
8
Feature length doc Conscientious Protectors tells the story of Extinction Rebellion, now on YouTube for free. Thanks Jamie Kelsey for the link.
potato gems
• A farmer from Cambridgeshire just donated thirteen tons of potatoes to charity.
• Zack Galifianakis’ lovely, quirky new Netflix series This Is A Gardening Show has a whole episode on growing root vegetables which, of course, includes some ace potato content. The vibe is ‘forest school on acid’.
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get in touch
email me: chris@christt.com
Instagram: cjthorpetracey
always there
• Sort out your ‘art life balance’ with a conversation to help reset your creativity: check out my face-to-face sessions
• Double Chorus newsletter on song and the music business, irregular, more casual
• Refigure podcast, bitesize arts review show I make with Rifa
• I host The Old Market podcast, interviewing brilliant artists each month
• 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
• My Xtra Mile Recordings albums: Love Is Not Rescue (2010), The Bear (2013), 9 Green Songs (2016) and Best of Chris T-T (double CD, 2017) are all available on CD with limited final stock on Bandcamp
• 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 too
Thanks again, please look after yourself and your people
all my love,
Chris
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