William Neil Scammell (1939-2000)

Billy Scammell has a lot to answer for. He and I were `best friends` in our boyhood village on the shores of Southampton Water. We were born in the same year - Bill was a few months older than me - we started school together at the Primary School in Hythe before going on to the `big` school at Hardley, when we were both 11; you could say (and some do) that we were both Hardley educated.

Out of school we spent all our time together and Bill especially enjoyed being at the bottom of our garden, which ended at the sea wall, watching the great liners coming and going along Southampton Water. We spent hours combing the beach along Shore Road for those boyhood treasures which were tossed overboard from passing ships - we built up an impressive collection of soggy matchbox tops, some of which I still have, 60 years later.

For different reasons, we went our seperate ways in our teens - my family moved away and Bill started life in the office of the Southern Daily Echo before becoming a photographer on the Cunard liners, which gave him the chance to see the world and to see life. We lost contact but when I retired I decided to try and find Bill again. None of our (by now) old friends in Hythe knew what became of him and it wasn`t until I `googled` Bill a couple of years ago that I discovered the bitter sweet truth. That Bill won a scholarship for mature students and won a degree in English and Philosophy at Bristol University. That he became a Lecturer in English at Newcastle University. That he took up full-time writing in 1991, acting as chief poetry reviewer for the Independant on Sunday and contributing to The Guardian, The Spectator, TLS, Poetry Review and others. That he published ten volumes of poetry, edited several anthologies as well as a collection of Ted Hughes` prose (Winter Pollen) and wrote a critical study of Keith Douglas, the first World War poet. Google also advised that Bill passed away in 2000 - a bitter sweet revelation indeed.

Last year, the good folk of Hythe commemorated Bill`s life and work by the erection of a plaque on his old house in Alexandra Road, which he left in 1954 to embark on his journey through life. A fitting tribute to a considerable talent.

But for all his literary talents, perhaps his greatest gift to me was to bestow upon me the nickname `Snopper` all those years ago in our schooldays. Clearly, even at that age, he possessed the gift of inventive description. Some years ago, long before I found out what happened to Bill, I began to contribute to web forums. The spooky thing is that, when I did so, I chose `Snopper` as my username; perhaps a sub-conscious throwback to those boyhood days in what Bill described as our `village by the sea` and to the memory of a good friend.