After allowing for time zone changes and jet lag, I had one day spare to see the sights before the NLP training began. As there was a choice of theme parks to attend and a lot of shopping malls to see, I was up early that day. By 7am, I am experiencing my first "all you can eat" breakfast for less than 4 dollars. Needless to say, I made sure I got my money's worth, read the paper, drank a bladder full of tea and after taking tourist advice from the helpful restaurant staff I headed off in search of a bus to go into town.

By 10am I was in the theme park and by 10.30am, I realised that I don't actually like theme parks. There's something about the insincerity of the places that make me feel a little bit depressed. I guess I prefer nature, beaches and countryside. I just don't enjoy mingling with men dressed up as cartoon characters and seeing dolphins imprisoned in swimming pools.

I stopped at one of the many restaurants and had a jumbo bowl of ice-cream and mug of steaming tea whilst collecting my thoughts. It was during the ice-cream headache that I formulated the plan of foregoing any attempt at "getting my money's worth" to have a go on the frighteningly large roller coaster and then leave the park and head back into town for the shopping malls.

Now, I got lucky. As there wasn't a queue for the roller coaster, I could jump straight on board. I didn't really think about it, I just jumped in the first seat available in front of me and quickly realised my mistake. In my excitement, I had ignored the etiquette of leaving an empty seat gap between myself and the next person. After all, about half the seats were empty. This etiquette failure wasn't missed by the 17-year-old blonde girl beside whom I had just sat, who in turn was sat next to her mum. They both looked at me and then looked at each other. Their expressions said it all.

I suddenly looked and felt like the man who is in a theme park on his own, who has just got onto a half empty ride and who has just sat too close to the underage pretty blonde girl. In the few seconds that this awful realisation and psychic exchange was occurring and before I could get up and move seats, the safety bar was lowered, thus trapping me inside this socially embarrassing situation.

But it got worse.

The only way to hold on was to have my arms up and out in front of me on the safety bar. The width of which meant than in order to hold on, my arm made an unnecessary level of contact with the girl's arm. And of course, being hot and sunny, we were both short sleeved. I tried to escape this, as did she, but unfortunately the only other place to rest my arms would be to have them down by my side, which would mean my hand would rest between my thighs and her thighs. Naturally, it was only by attempting this that I found this out.

I had visions of how the press release would go after my arrest.

This wasn't at all good.

And it got worse.

Now, with this teenage girl clearly feeling very uncomfortable with my continued presence and an inescapable level of skin-to-skin contact, her mother attempted to call over the attendant to raise the barriers so that they could move to some other seats. But no-one heard her and the bastard ride started to move.

Continuing to feel very awkward indeed and unable to escape, the roller coaster climbed higher and higher and higher and higher and higher until I was worried that I was actually going to faint. Then, just when I could panic no more, it rocketed vertically downwards with a horrifying level of acceleration. A thought briefly flashed across my brain that this must be the sensation that one gets just before a plane crashes from a very high altitude, and I am sure I lost consciousness somewhere for a moment. I'd been grappling around in my panic and realised that I was now holding the blonde girl's safety bar and not my own. I could feel her glaring at me as we corkscrewed around the loop the loop thing and I struggled not to be sick.

But it was to get worse. Much, much worse.

About 30 seconds after it had started, the ride was finally over and the safety bars were released. Mother and daughter quickly left the ride as I struggled to regain control of my limbs and found to my amazement that I could actually breathe again. Then, in attempting to control my exit from the coaster, I managed to thrust myself out onto the platform, stumble forward like a drunkard and go crashing into both mother and daughter who were squatting down whilst putting their shoes back on.

The only thing for which I am thankful is that I had peace of mind not to try to grab either of them to try and save myself falling. Instead, I crashed to the ground whilst mother, daughter and the ride attendants deliberated whether or not to call the paramedics or to call the police.

I didn't wait around to hear the sirens and clumsily fled the scene of the social crime. I escaped back to the hotel to regain my dignity, change my clothes and put on a wig before heading to the mall for some serious shopping.

I'd never been to America before and this was turning out to be one heck of an introduction.

There are of course other perils with attending a training that is a sizable distance away from home. For example, problems can arise from the choice of accommodation. One such problem was experienced by Trevor - a hefty 6 foot, 6 inch tall Safety Officer from Scarborough. Looking rather haggard from jet-lag on the first day of the training, Trevor explained the problems of staying in a cheap motel. Keen to avoid the rather high bedroom fees of the hotel in which the training was held, Trevor opted instead to save a fortune and book into what became quickly known "The Bates Motel" across the road. It was a decision he quickly began to regret. Not only were the beds too short, but the "bed end" meant that stretching out was totally impossible.

Of course, this was only the start of Trevor's regrets. For you see, being a cheap motel in an expensive part of town, the Bates' Motel was inevitably a major draw to students looking for cheap accommodation during their Spring Break. And of course the student Spring Break coincided perfectly with the duration of the training.

So, lying diagonally each night in a hapless attempt at comfort, Trevor was forced to endure the hormonal antics of drunken teenagers and student sex each and every night for the duration of his stay. The evidence of such activity was invariably found slithering around on the shared bathroom's floor each and every morning.

Of course, all this torment proved very amusing to the other course attendees who would have to nudge Trevor awake at the end of each group hypnosis session lest his snoring give the trainers completely the wrong impression.

It was only when Trevor developed a rather sinister skin rash that everyone started staying away.

Rather than seeing it as a worrying problem, it was this rash that one attendee from Birmingham began to wonder might solve his own particular problems arising from being on the course.

"Do you think I am overly attractive?" asked Derek in a concerned tone of voice.

"What?" I asked, not quite sure where this was going.

"No. No. Not like that. I mean, to men, do you think I am attractive to men?"

And I must say, I was even more concerned for a moment. After all, I had just returned from the coffee shop with Janet, Derek's wife, who was standing right beside me. Now, I've been on courses before where on the last evening attendees gather in the bar and rapidly turn it into some strange kind of immoral fuckfest, but this seemed too early on in the course. We were only on day two out of six. So, just where on earth was Derek leading with this line of questioning...? I was worried.

"Derek, what are you on about?" I asked as I quickly hid behind Janet.

"Well, see him over there," he said pointing at a ginger haired guy. "I think he might fancy me or something."

I had to look again. After all, the guy being pointed at is considered to be quite a "name" in the field.

"What on earth makes you think that?" I asked.

And so Derek told me. Apparently, the previous day Ginger had told him that he thought Derek was "hot" and winked knowingly. As a rampant heterosexual, poor Derek was a little confused by this and wondered just what Ginger had meant.

"Let me take you in there and show you," Ginger had apparently replied with another wink whilst gesturing to the toilets.

"And what did you say to him?" I asked as Derek was turning quite red with embarrassment at telling the story.

"I didn't know what to say," said Derek.

"So, you didn't say, 'no', then?" I asked much to the amusement of the rapidly assembling audience who had migrated away from Trevor's infection update to hear about a possible NLP sex scandal.

"Uhhh...no......urrghh...fuck off!

So, we'll return to the blooming relationship between Derek and Ginger in a bit.

Meanwhile, NLP courses tend to attract some fairly common stereotypes. The most evident are what have become known as the "NLP Wankers" - these are the course junkies and groupies who wander around smugly intimidating everyone with how fantastic they feel and like to show off how confident they are. Visual cues are often there too. The guys invariably have a little pony tail and tend to mimic their favourite trainers' mannerisms and dress style, and the girls tend to have to project their voice at all times, stand like a man and invariably stand too close.

Their conversation skills are fairly limited to discussion such as, "Who did you train with?" and "How did you get into NLP?" and so forth. They do of course always refer to their celebrity trainers on first name terms and always have a story to tell about their amazing experience to anyone who will stand and listen. Any deviation from the theme tends to confuse them a bit, something that often sends them running over to their next victim.

The other category that is common are the "Wannabe NLP Wankers" - this is the second most dangerous category of all. These are the 'Groupies In Training' who are still at that ridiculous meta-model phase and think it hilarious to challenge everything with a "...specifically?" question. I hate these idiots and wish for them all to be neutered. The reason for this is that they tend to want to "do" NLP on everyone - they wander around commanding everyone with exceptionally unsubtle language patterns and keep poking and prodding everyone under the guise of "anchoring."

Shoot them. Shoot them all.

Often on the big courses, it isn't unusual to find a reasonable number of people with mild to significant emotional and/or behavioural problems. This is to be expected of course, because seminars focussing on NLP and hypnosis tend carry a significant leaning towards personal development, and so those in need of personal development attend. Of this attendee group, the majority will have self insight and so tend not to present any of their problems to other people outside of any appropriate context.

So, this is the category of normal people. They are there for all the right reasons, with social skills variable, dress codes mixed and they tend not to go around inflicting their NLPness upon everyone else.

So, all well and good so far.

...continued....

About the Author

Andrew T. Austin is a clinical hypnotherapist and neurolinguist in Chichester West Sussex. He regularly runs workshops and courses aimed at NLP practitioners and therapists. Website: http://www.23NLPeople.com