About the Author

I had a forty year career in the motor industry, starting out with VW, and at my retirement I was Marketing Dirctor for Honda NZ.I met and married Reiko Hayakawa in Japan. She was the daughter of Sessue Hayakawa, who played the infamous Colonel Saito opposite Alec Guiness in ' The Bridge on the River Kwai'.I was happily married to her for twenty-eight years, before she was taken by aml [leukaemia]. I told her story in 'Don't Come Back' a comment made by her uncle, when she was leaving Japan.I made over one hundred business trips to Japan with business at Subaru, Komatsu, Mazda, and Honda to mention a few. I met Siochiro Honds four or five times. A really nice man.I was chair[I prefer sofa] of a large chapter of the NZ Society of Authors, with 640 members.My two Motor Industry tales are loosely based on more of the amusing events I either witnessed or was party to over my career.The little workbook on hip replacement came from my own naive approach to this very invasive surgery.The Patient Pensioner story draws attention to the very lose administration of social benefits in NZ. One brilliant frauster had 127 aliases, and was making so much money that when finally caught, he had gold bard hidden in his fishpond!My partner Dr. Sabine Fenton was awarded ' Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit, last year for services to translation and interpreting.