New Escapologist : May 2025 + OUR KICKSTARTER IS LIVE

If your shoes creak, I am a lost man.

May 29, 2025

It’s just a short newsletter this month, folks, because there’s no news other than, oh, OUR LATEST KICKSTARTER IS LIVE!!

Please back the campaign if you’d like to see four more print editions of New Escapologist and for our nifty little project to continue to 2027.

Here’s a preview of the cover of Issue 18, which (if the Kickstarter is successful) will materialise in the autumn. We’ve already booked a launch event at the Magazine Appreciation Society in Glasgow on November 19th.

In addition to financing the next four issues, we have great plans for shipping and distribution. I really want to improve our game on these fronts. As well as little things like researching the perfect envelope and hand-making a letter-pressed thank you card, we want to establish a base in mainland Europe from which to ship our magazine within the EU (putting an end to the logistical problems some of you know about) and also more permanent bookshop distribution in the UK, EU, Scandinavia and the Americas.

Shall we make it happen? Four more issues, a launch event, and improved shipping and distribution?

This will all start with Issue 18: The Time of Your Life. For this we have interviews, columns and essays planned and, let me tell you, it’s glorious stuff. The best we’ve done. Here’s where to go. And thank you, as always. This only ever continues with your consent and your patronage.

Your Escapological titbits for May follow below.

Your friend in flight,

Robert Wringham
www.newescapologist.co.uk

A Wise Course

This is from A Haunted Hotel (1878) by Wilkie Collins:

He decided forthwith on taking the only wise course that was open under the circumstances. In other words, he decided on taking to flight.

To his servant, this character says:

Now then, softly, Thomas! If your shoes creak, I am a lost man.

So Put Your Little Hand in Mine

This guy escaped his crappy life after watching one of my favourite movies and yours, Groundhog Day.

Within three days of watching Groundhog Day, I’d taken more action than I had in the previous three years. I quit all four of my jobs and broke up with my girlfriend. I used most of my savings to pay back-rent on our flat, then moved into a place on my own.
I did almost nothing for about five weeks. I’d spent every day rushing from job to job, attempting to avoid thinking about my life – so I spent a lot of time just staring at the wall, trying to get to grips with what I wanted to do next. At first it was terrifying, just feeling my brain work – and asking myself all the existential questions I’d been repressing. But slowly, I started to feel a tiny bit less afraid. When my money ran out, I took a catering job, but I made an effort to cap my working hours.

Not bad.

Chuck, Naked

A raunchy one from Charles Bukowski’s Factotum, a book about his youth spent in unemployment:

I understood it too well now – that great lovers were always men of leisure. I fucked better as a bum than as a puncher of timeclocks.

Thanks to Reader M for sending it in.

👉 Psst. Please back the Kickstarter! It all depends on you! 👈

Normal

From a photography article in the Guardian:

I discovered they were 29-year-old twins who lived nearby in a tent, in woodland behind a friend’s trailer home. These boys had never learned how to have a “normal” life – how to organise everything, show up to a job, all the basic things.

It’s another reminder of the richness and variety of human experience. Worried about quitting an office job for something more rewarding, or downsizing to a smaller property so that you don’t need so much money? Well these guys live in the woods. And they always did.

Letter to the Editor: Wish Me Luck

To send a letter to the editor, simply write in. You’ll get a reply and we’ll anonymise any blogged version.

Reader E writes:

Howdy RW (and fellow Escapologists if you’re reading),
“E” here writing to you from West London – actually, from Croatia where I am lounging on a beach near Split. But usually, based in WLdn.
I am currently re-reading I’m Out (my signed copy… thanks!!) and pondering my current life situation; more specifically, where I may still fall into The Trap.
This year I made a pledge to limit my shopaholic tendencies and have purchased just one non essential item of clothing all year, a very pretty silk dress, at a 15% discount, which I wear almost weekly. Other than that, I have curbed my spending on clothes exponentially, and it’s had an impact on my other spending too. Money spent on non-essentials translates into hours of work I’d need to undertake to pay for them, and whether I would be willing to sacrifice e.g. a day of early retirement for a takeaway and a new jacket. The answer is usually no, and I’ve managed to save approximately a third of my net income per month since adopting this mindset.
I am about to turn 22 years old and am in quite a unique situation where I am a homeowner with no debt, due to a series of both fortunate and unfortunate events, and so I am seeking ways to further reduce my spending so that I can retire, ideally, in the next 18 years. Possibly sooner, 40 just seems like a milestone age. Realistically, with an income of circa £2k/month after PAYE tax, £1.5k after council tax and bills, I should be able to cut out even more expenditure. If I can manage this without cutting out trips to my local pub and social club, this would be ideal. I am attempting to get back into sewing and repairing my own, and friends’/family’s clothes, and have tried my best at cooking from scratch (and growing my own herbs on my flat’s tiny windowsill).
I hope you know you have inspired me to see my friendships, happiness, relationships, hobbies, etc., as priorities over the Trap of careerism. I work a bullshit job. Everyone around me does too. Nobody will remember me as “a competent customer relationship management administrator” when I die.
Cheerio, look forward to reading the next one.
Wish me luck!

Well, what are you waiting for? Wish her luck, everyone!

That’s all for May. Please back the Kickstarter! Our current model is to Kickstart a cycle of four issues every couple of years. We were very successful in this in 2023 and the four resultant issues were the best we’ve ever done. Let’s do even better. Back it here.

Thank you everyone and happy Spring,