RoyII

On a recent weekend evening I was walking back to my car after a trip to that shop in New Malden formerly known as Threshers (I know it has changed hands but I can never remember the new name), and as I gripped my recently purchased bottle of wine, it has to be said I was feeling more than a bit of trepidation. A friend of mine had invited me to her birthday/house warming party, and since I only knew her and another mate who was going along, the potential was there for a fairly awkward evening.

As it turned out my fears proved to be totally unfounded. The people who turned up proved to be really nice, and after a couple of drinks against the background of some scarily 80's music from the stereo, I began to feel more relaxed.

One of the other guests seemed to have a pretty interesting job - her role involved practising hypno-therapy, or in other words, she hypnotised people. This reminded me of an event that happened many years ago at university, when I went to see a Hypnotist do a stage show in the Student Union bar. The hypnotist lined up some willing victims on the stage, and he seemed to use his hypnotic powers to great effect - one person seemed convinced that his legs had disappeared, another one was under the impression that he was a chicken and was waddling around the stage clucking loudly - what would have happened if he had been instructed to lay eggs was anyone's guess! Other people were suddenly unable to say certain words...and so on. Whilst finding this all pretty funny, I wasn't too sure about how genuine the hypnotic powers of the compare were.

 You are feeling sleepy...

From what this lady told me, it looks as if the hypnotist from my college days may have been genuine. It is apparently very easy to hypnotise people, and you can forget all the guff about having to look into the hypnotist's eyes, or focusing on the movements of a swinging antique watch, it can be done in literally seconds! To be successful, the receiver must be willing to accept the instructions of the hypnotist,otherwise it won't take affect at all. Certain personality types are more susceptible to it than others.

I was hoping that she could use her powers to help improve my Squash playing, but she said that quite a bit of background knowledge of my case would be needed before she could try the hypno-therapy. It was a bit of the shame, but the rest of the evening went quickly enough. Perhaps she is better at her job than she thinks.