Hello and welcome to Border Crossing issue #93.
Thank you for reading.
I’m finishing this at Butlins in Minehead, on a hotel balcony overlooking the Bristol channel. It’s quite beautiful and about ten miles away on the Welsh south coast I can just about make out the little town where my Grandma grew up. Or I could if I had better eyesight.
Did a wonderful gig on Friday night, playing piano for Jim — just the two of us — to three thousand amazing people, who got properly into it. That comes off the back of a fantastic week in the studio with my friend Tom, starting work tracking his new songs. I love months like this: super-busy but none of it is piecemeal work, it’s all creativity of some kind. Increasingly rare but essential to keep a hold of them.
Now driving to Manchester for Louder Than Words music books festival...
If you’re interested in Creative Counselling, you can now pre-order my six month programme, which launches in January 2025. It’s not cheap, and there are only five places, but I’m hugely enjoying the first round and definitely want to keep going with this idea. If you (or someone you know) needs help improving your creative life balance, needs to climb out of a creativity rut, or to re-focus, or do more strategic work around your creative output, get in touch.
gems
1
Even in this time of heady edgelord politics, it’s been a while since I thought about the Mitfords. For me, it used to be the journalist Andrew Collins who always banged on about them, in pleasing fashion. Now, as Noah McCormack writes in his terrific essay for New Republic, ‘Jessica Mitford’s Escape From Fascism’, which was published on Halloween, “much like the idea of Britain as a great power, the Mitfords are fading from popular consciousness”. McCormack’s piece is a solid bulwark against forgetting a brilliant story that entwines one oddball family with the shaping of the twentieth century. It’s a blast — and hopefully will send you digging for more detail.
2
Olga Koch’s full stand-up show Prawn Cocktail just went up on YouTube for free, taped in Auckland, NZ (which is sort of relevant to the content of the show). It’s bloody great. I think Koch is on the cusp of stardom.
3
Marianela D’Aprile writes for Jacobin on repetitive gender tropes and heteronormativity in Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo and other novels.
4
Full-length conversation with the veteran anti-imperialist activist Tariq Ali for publisher Verso, promoting his new memoir, You Can’t Please All.
5
potato gem
Someone called Danny Malin says, in Yorkshire Evening Post, “I’m singing about roast potatoes on my new Christmas single, and here’s why…” (warning: clicking on this British local news site is a pop-up advert nightmare)
Also this week, Rebekah Vardy slagged off Wayne Rooney by calling him a “baked potato”, in her desperate ongoing tabloid-stoked harassment of the Rooneys. Not linking to that, though.
get in touch
email: chris@christt.com
Instagram: @cjthorpetracey
always there
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Look after yourself and your people.
All my love,
Christopher
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