I recollect a story Neil Williams once told me: he was back-packing out in the American Southwest, Arizona or New Mexico. Neil had spread out his bedroll for the evening, but before turning in, he walked some distance away to sit and watch the sunset. After night had fallen, he found that he somehow couldn’t bring himself to go back to the bedroll; he just had a ‘strong feeling’ about it. So he slept where he was, and spent the night there. In the morning, he returned to his bedroll to pack it away, and when he picked it up, there on the ground was revealed a huge poisonous centipede, perhaps six inches long.

This incident made an impression on me because, like Neil, I have a deep revulsion for centipedes and I can feel when one is in the room. Sometimes I even wake up from the feeling, and I can’t get back to sleep until I have found the centipede and killed it. So Neil’s hunch about that bedroll was a good one, as were many of his hunches.

Neil also stuck me as a strong, soft-spoken man, although he could hold his own when the occasion required it. Our friend David Prentice, the painter, got into some trouble one night at Max’s Kansas City, and Neil unflinchingly backed him up in the ensuing brawl – in which, according to them, they acquitted themselves pretty well. Neil was a loyal friend.