Neil: Mum was born in a little town north of Auckland, in a place called Dargaville. Hers was a tough childhood. Her parents didn't get on too well together and her father spent a lot of time away from the family home. He was an auctioneer and loved practical jokes - the only problem was that many of them were quite nasty. For example he taught Mum to jump from the table into his arms and one day deliberately dropped her telling her through her tears 'That will teach you never to trust anyone'.

Another time he promised that he would bring her a monkey on his next trip to Auckland. Mum carefully laid out the bowls of bread and milk as he had told her. But, when inevitably there was no monkey he just laughed at her.

Mum left home at the age of 12 to go into service working as a servant in large houses. Although she was able to rely on her older sister Doris, it wasn't until much later that the two of them were able to look after their younger sister Myrtle.

I remember Mum's mother and her second husband - a fierce penny pinching Scot called Mac (MacGregor was his surname) who only changed his socks once a week. Once when Mum was ill I stayed with them and went to Belmont Primary School for a week or so. In those days we all took sandwiches to school and my Nanna gave me tomato sauce sandwiches. Just bread, butter and tomato sauce. Now who would ever swap with a boy who only had tomato sauce sandwiches?

I only met my Grandfather once when he turned up on our doorstep, but the bitterness was too deep and Mum sent him away without inviting him in.

Neil: Mum was a bit of a super Mum. Not only did she look after us four kids, but she also found time to set up a kindergarten, to become an excellent club golfer, to learn Braille and later to win many prizes at indoor and outdoor bowls.

In this middle of all this, when I was about 10, she developed cancer in her upper leg which later spread to her womb, resulting in a hysterectomy and in having a large chunk of nerves removed from her leg.

Talking of medical matters, they discovered not long after the war that she had blood so rare that only one other person in the world (a woman in England) was known to have it. What was so special was that it could be used to helping blue babies - ones whose blood was incompatible with its mother and were born with a blueish tinge from a lack of oxygen. And, without a blood transfusion, these babies would die. Mum's blood was, somehow, vital in the detection or treatment. Anyway they took so much blood from her at one stage that she was anaemic for the rest of her life.

At one stage they thought I had the same blood group but decided that there was an unacceptably large amount of impurities.

And waking Mum up at 4am by climbing in my window. I'd forgotten my key and was out late at some party. She'd woken up in the middle of the night, got worried taht I wasn't home and had paced the house until finally falling asleep on my bed.

And Mum paying us 1s 6d for each chicken we killed and a similar amount for plucking and gutting.

And the bee swarm that settled in the garden. Mum had to get the bee man to remove them.

It still pains me to think of those too many times I said goodbye at airports, in letters and on the telephone. Of course the hardest were when I made those trips to say goodbye forever. First was 11 years ago in December 1978 to see Mum. I'd only just learned that she had cancer and, as it turned out, she would only last until the following July. I took them both to our most favourite place in the world - two Pauanui. And I was able to cook for them and talk with them and cry with them.

What's hard is to understand what really made them tick. Why did Mum hoard tins of food for so long that the tins went rusty and we threw it out by the wheelbarrow load?