I’m a Brit, originally from Shaw (Lancashire), currently living in Canada with my girlfriend and our 4 dogs. After leaving the RAF in 1993 I went to uni for 4 years and emerged with an honours degree in Business Computing and the door to the wonderful world of IT was opened.
I moved from Scotland to England to take up my first IT job as a software tester which went quite well until I, along with 9 others, got ‘downsized’. A quick tweak of my CV plus a plug from a friend to the agency he worked through saw me enter the world of freelance IT contracting.
I contracted for three and a half years and when my contract at Telewest ran out I decided to have a rest and started punting for a living (mainly laying horses) and for a while things looked rosy. I had a nice car and it paid my mortgage each month and allowed me to spend a lot of time in Canada to be with my girlfriend who I met a couple of months before the end of my last contract. After 3 years of to-ing and fro-ing across the Atlantic I took the decision to pack up my kit and move. So that’s what I did.
Things started to go wrong on the punt about a month after I arrived in Canada and within a very short space of time I had practically no money left and no job to go to as I was new to the country and had no status that allowed me to work.
I’ve been here in Canada since 2005 and I’m classed as a resident and I’m working but my real passion, obsession, call it what you like, is trying to bring in a significant revenue stream from punting. I did it before and I know I can do it again but there are differences this time round – I don’t have anywhere near enough of a betting bank that would be a prerequisite for this kind of thing and instead of horses I’ll mainly be concentrating on football matches.
This blog is my way of sharing my ups and downs with anyone who cares to read it as I attempt to make some sort of income from punting.
The Expat Punter 