Somebody asked me to explain what last week's post had to do with Oscar. Imagine me in far away Australia, dreaming of going home. I was very young and still believd in "home." I was not at all sure how you went about the business of getting a job. Here's the relevant bit. As to who Oscar was, you'll have to read the book.
Extract from Oscar & Lucy:
After a couple of years I decided I wanted to go home. Here’s not the place to say why. It was necessary to find a new job and I had no idea at all how you did this. If you’ve been paying attention to this epic you will have noticed that my jobs up to this point had been provided as a result of angelic intervention. It seemed unreasonable to expect them to keep this up. After thinking about it, the best I could come up with was to write a rather craven letter to the only Important Psychologist I could think of – Donald Broadbent, head of an Applied Psychology Unit at Cambridge. Perhaps you don’t know of him - just imagine a god-like being, that should do. It seemed unlikely that god would reply, although oddly enough I felt no urge to write elsewhere. And indeed, there was no reply. Not for about three months, that is, when a letter did arrive; not from the great man himself, but from another lesser eminence, unknown to me. He apologised for the delay, said he had heard from god, and suggested I wrote to a named individual at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, enclosing appropriate letters of recommendation. He urged me to enquire whether a particular post was still available. I copied this form of words, asked two colleagues to write in my support, and duly winged my air mail to Scotland. Three weeks later Scotland replied. The post I referred to had been filled. There was, however, a lectureship vacant. It was assumed this would be of interest and accordingly it was offered to me, subject to a period of probation. So that’s how it’s done, thought I.