I was at Reid Kerr college, learning computers. I loved it! It was the 90’s, Oasis were battling against Blur to top the charts, I discovered I had a brain after years of disinterest at school, and I was doing well. Then one day I quit and became a carer for a family member — I was 18 years old. It was a tough life, living on nothing but benefits, working as a full-time carer. I saw people I went to school with progress, build careers, find partners, buy homes, have children but my life never changed. I did this for 14 years, but in 2009 my role as a carer ended. I tried to find work but was unemployed for six months. Who’d hire a 32-year-old with no job experience? With the recession and having no work experience finding a job, any job was hard. On May 10th 2010 I sat on the train from Bishopton to Paisley and watched the trees fly by as an unemployed man. It had taken the last three months for me to get to the stage where the job centre was ready to sign me off after letting them know I wanted to be a self-employed dog walker and had a business idea called Bishopton dog walking servicesâ€. The HMRC told me I needed to ‘sign off’ and then register my business to get working tax credits while the jobcentre told me I needed to register my business first and then ‘sign off’! It had been six months since I’d been made unemployed when I arrived at the job centre for the very last time! An hour later and after sorting out some forms, I sat back on the train and watched the same scenery go by. The same trees, the same buildings, the same blue sky, yet my whole world had changed. I was now, and suddenly self-employed and there was a future for me beckoning, good or bad!
