My real Name is Paul Ward, I was born in 1961, (I share my birthday with Nelson), I'm married with one daughter and five cats. I live in Woking in the south of England, the town where the Martians landed in War of the Worlds.

I work as a Teaching Assistant in a local School, a job I really enjoy as I get lots of time off and don’t have to work weekends. It’s also a fairly worthwhile thing to do, teaching the young. I get all the fun of being a teacher and none of the boring planning and marking stuff.

Previously I’ve had many jobs. I’ve been the manager of both a bookshop and a comic shop, I’ve worked as an illustrator and designer for many years and owned my own games shop. I’ve worked in factories and on building sites and for the software industry as a game designer.

My interests include games (obviously), not just wargaming but RPGs board games and video games too. I read a lot, mostly history for the factual stuff, I like first hand accounts especially; and a mixture of genres for fiction. I used to collect comics but nowadays I can’t be bothered. I occasionally buy a couple that look interesting but my collection has shrunk to include mainly the ones I read in the 60s and 70s when I was starting to read them and everything was new and exciting.
There are a few later gems and quite a lot of European stuff left in too.

I like films and have a fairly large collection of Blu-Rays and dvds.

I bought my first miniature in 1978, the Death Dealer figure by Ral Partha, and my lead addiction started from then. Previously I had owned many plastic Cowboys, Indians and US Cavalry made by Timpo and Britons and their like. I also had a well used set of 1/32 Airfix WWII figures. I'm currently rebuilding all these old collections in lead. Updates on my progress will appear on this site regularly of course.

I began Matakishi's Tea House in January 2006 as a way to chronicle my projects and it quickly grew in size and popularity with over 4.5 million visitors in it's 11 years of existence. Now, in 2017, It's got a new home here with a new hosting service and new ways to present my work.