A friend who lives under an active volcano on St. Vincent stayed a month as his guest in New York and, terrified by a 3 a.m. thunderstorm, leapt out of the guest room she shared with his daughter into his wife's bed.

His daughter at four told someone her father was 'a lecturer', which she could not pronounce, and rendered her mother's word 'functional' as 'punkenol' - a family word he still uses for a gift whose purpose nobody can work out.

Neville's wife went to the Turner Exhibition in New York City on its closing day and saw a Turner painting of a human skull with a being rising in the light within it; Neville missed it there and again when it came to his own city.

Just before leaving for this lecture, Neville talked with an Egyptian U.C.L.A. student who sits with his wife on lecture nights and answers the phone; the student told him his father had dreamt of a friend falling dead in the street with people weeping over him, and a week later the friend dropped dead exactly so, the father seeing him ask, "What are they crying about?"

With his wife in hospital awaiting surgery, Neville telephoned her the night before and, since she could not speak, had the head nurse read her a thought for meditation; the operation took place that morning.