I often talked on Pnet about retiring from punting, however ironically I have now virtually retired without intending to.
I am currently in the worst financial situation of my life - nothing to do with the recession or even punting, just my own stupidity over the past couple of years. This together with another personal problem means I don't know where my next punt is coming from. It also doesn't help that there still appears to be very little locally of interest to me.
After a great punt I frequently talked about it being my last one. Over the past couple of years these were ones with Nicoletta, but I remember talking to Amy (who I have seen more than any other wg) about it long before I knew Nicoletta. I had had a two girl punt with Amy and Adrianna (a Russian girl I also saw regularly at the time) at Adrianna's flat. Amy left with me to walk back to her place which was nearby. As we were walking down the street I told her that might well be last punt as I was thinking of giving up. She replied she doubted I would. This was maybe five years ago and she was right.
However thus far this year I have had just seven punts. One at Arabesque Bury in February, three in London at Easter and another three in London at the beginning of June. It will probably be just about the first year since I started punting that I won't have had a punt in a Sheffield parlour. Just checked and I did have one in December, so it is still nowhere near a year yet. In my early days of punting I only had five or six punts a year, but these were spread out over the year and not squashed together on a London visit as I have to have them now. However for most of my punting career I have had probably 20 - 30 punts a year and sometimes many more.
I did want to be in control of when I stopped punting, but instead because of financial and another problem it has been somewhat taken out of my hands, and instead of going out consciously with a great punt or two it has just sort of fizzled out. 
Which I guess is the way of most things in reality.
This is doubly ironic in view of the success of UKP and our upcoming first anniversary. Being a non punter I actually feel a bit of a fraud at present. With the exceptions of my reviews of my London punts this year most of my comments about punting have been in the past - see my extensive post about Sheffield punts for example. This is rather worrying.
Even more worrying is that someone at work told me recently that I was living on past memories rather than the present or the future. (I think it was when I turned the wedding invite down.) This is also basically true, although of course they weren't referring to punting. 
Hopefully I might manage to scrape together the means and the opportunity to have a couple of punts to celebrate our anniversary in the next couple of weeks. However in the past money hasn't been that much of a problem for me, so although I wasn't happy I could put up with the bad punts. As this is no longer the case I simply cannot afford to experience a bad un now .
It's not your fault you are retiring, it is simply due to their being no decent english hookers around who aren't 15 years older than advertised and fat. English girls seem to be responsible for the obesity problems if AW is anything to go by.
As such you are left with the Russian roulette punting game of fucking Eastern Europeans. Yes some cracking ones around, the Polish seem to be the better ones as I think their work ethic means they do try and please the punter or at least a good number of them do, but unfortunately there is just too big a risk of getting some Romanian. The risk/reward analysis with punting is too great now and I'm now stuck with just seeing girls I've seen before which is rubbish as I like variety, only one girl in all my years of punting is worth seeing regularly.
You are making a wise move. At the moment too many hookers don't seem to realise the punter comes first. If more of us go on a punting strike maybe they will get the message.
