Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ

Every working day this magazine receives many pitiful calls for counselling
and advice from labourers in the scientific vineyards who are finding themselves
quite unable to cope unaided with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
let alone the perverse doings and opaque thinkings of our political masters
and mistresses and their many Whitehall mobsters.

The idea struck me recently that it would be an excellent idea if New
Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ were to provide the much needed services of its very own agony
aunt. Just imagine it, week in, week out Dr Anna Lyser would make her wisdom
and experience available to one and all who sought her help. She would,
of course, be a sociologist, and so would know far more about people than
they know about themselves, and her diagnoses and prescriptions could thus
be relied upon entirely. So here, then, are a few examples of the kind
of worries which anxious readers might reveal to our very own Dr Anna Lyser.

Worried, Cambridge writes: ‘I am a brilliant young astrophysicist (or
so my girlfriend says – the ‘brilliant’ bit I mean – I do know I’m an astrophysicist
without her having to tell me), and I love my work and wouldn’t want to
change jobs. But it doesn’t pay very well, and I want to get married to
my nice girlfriend, and buy quite a big house and have some clever children
and send them to private schools. And I would like to own a nice car and
I would quite like to have a few good paintings by artists like the late
Mr Picasso and that mad chap who chopped off his ear. I believe they cost
quite a lot of money, and you can’t get very far on a university lecturer’s
salary these days, can you? What should I do?’

DAL replies: ‘Write a book about the Universe, dear. Give it a sufficiently
jazzy title and then what’s inside won’t matter. Might I suggest something
like How God Made God. After that you can rabbit on for the necessary number
of pages with all your fancy little theories, and you won’t even have to
bother to write in terms which your average punter can understand, because
by that time it won’t matter, will it? They’ll have bought the book and
you’ll have earned your royalties. It’s the title that counts. Never mind
the contents. You should be able to afford your first van Gogh (the one
who chopped off his ear, dear) within about a couple of years. Good luck!

Excited, Slough, asserts: ‘I’ve had a frightfully good idea for a machine.
I was watching some potatoes boiling on the hob the other day when I noticed
how the steam kept lifting the lid of the saucepan. It immediately occurred
to me that it might be possible to use the power of steam to drive some
kind of engine. Can you tell me how I should go about exploiting this brilliant
·É³ó±ð±ð³ú±ð?’

DAL responds: ‘It’s been done, dear. Sorry!’

Frustrated, Westminster bemoans: ‘I am a fully qualified chemist and
a woman. Nevertheless, some 40-plus years ago, and despite my sex, I was
rapidly making a name for myself as the brains behind the formula for a
fantastic new line in ice cream desserts. But I was young and inexperienced
and, perhaps, a teeny-weeny bit overambitious. So what did I do?

‘I kicked over the traces, and abandoned my promising career in science,
and qualified as a lawyer, and entered the wild world of politics. For
a long time things went jolly well, and I rose steadily through the ranks
of my chosen party to become a very important person indeed. In fact, for
more than 10 years I was by far the most important person in Britain, if
not the world.

‘Then, suddenly, everything went terribly wrong. My fantastic achievements
and worldwide popularity had made my closest colleagues so frightfully jealous
that they hatched a despicable plot and got me thrown out of my job, since
when I’ve been desperately searching for a role consistent with my exceptional
abilities and powers of leadership. What can you suggest? I’ve got a BSc.
(Oh, and I’m also an FRS–although I’m not quite sure whether I was elected
because of my seminal work on ice cream technology or just because I used
to be such a very important person. Either way, it looks good in my CV.)
Do you think that, with my qualifications and background, I could renew
my once-promising career in science, and perhaps get to give the Royal Institution
Christmas Lectures, or win a Nobel prize, or manage one of the other things
(such as presenting The Sky at Night) which make some scientists much loved
and famous?’

DAL analyses: ‘The fact that you already have an FRS would certainly
give you a flying start should you decide to attempt a comeback in the
world of science. However, despite your nom de plume I think I can guess
who you really are, and if I’m right I fear you might find yourself not
quite so popular among your new colleagues as might be wished. I’m afraid
that, rightly or wrongly, quite a few senior scientists reckon that when
you were C-in-C you rather sold their lot down the river. And you wouldn’t
want to go through yet another peer group bust-up, would you? Perhaps you’d
be wiser just to stick to the international lecture circuit, which, I understand,
is paying you pretty well.’

Donald Gould is a former editor of New Å®ÉúСÊÓƵ, now contemplating
a career as ‘Agonising of Landbeach’