Sunday in London

I've mentioned in a few previous posts that I would really like to get a lot more practice at hypnosis than I currently am getting and recently it seems that plan B - hypnotising complete strangers in pubs - has come back to haunt me. However, as I'm officially turning out to be what Lee, one of the guys who came to the meet last Thursday, refers to as "a victim of the confidence and shyness monsters" I have so far failed to perform any impromptu hypnosis.

Yesterday afternoon I caught the train to London in order to meet up for lunch with Chris (alias elvisampio), who I also met for the first time on Thursday. The plan was that the two of us could go and try our luck at finding some people to hypnotise. Sunday afternoon, we thought, would be a good time to go looking because generally people would be sober and not in any hurry to be doing anything else.

I have decided (and I can say this from a true position of knowledge and experience...) that University students are probably the ideal impromptu hypnosis subjects. They're usually inoffensive, supposedly intelligent and more often than not have nothing better to be doing. Many of them are on degree courses like history of art psychology, with about 2 optional lectures a week, and so idle time is often their forté. Chris agreed with this before I even suggested it, and so it seemed to me the best course of action was to type "student pub" into Google maps, and choose the first hit that came back; The Court, a pub on Tottenham Court Road, near UCL.

If nothing else we discovered that it's possible to get a full Sunday roast in central London for under £5 if you know where to look.

Unfortunately, having finished lunch, we realised that another form of hypnosis had taken over the attention of everybody else in the pub; the football was being shown on the large wall TV screens. Deciding try our luck elsewhere, we wandered around the local area only to find that all the other pubs, the ones without TVs at least, were practically empty.

Eventually we wandered into a Wetherspoons, and here we thought we were onto something because it was a lot busier than anywhere else we'd been to. We got ourselves some drinks and found a table from which to survey the scene. Having excluded all of the people who were eating or not speaking English we came to the conclusion that our best and only bet was the group of people of about student age, four girls and one guy, in the corner.

As the glasses containing our (non-alcoholic) drinks emptied our conversation narrowed to the point where we were agreeing with each other, quite emphatically, that we really should approach that group. Absolutely, definately, certainly, and after you. It became apparent to me that Chris was a little bit nervous about doing the approaching bit. From my own position of extremely nervous I was rather jealous of that, truth be told.

I was never in the scouts, but if I had been I would have definitely had my procrastinator's badge (naturally the other badges would have been work in progress).

Suddenly, without warning, Chris jumped up strode off across the bar and after a couple of seconds I realised he was going up to that table. Then I realised that somehow I was following him. I didn't hear his opening line, although I gather it was something about whether they could settle a bet over whether men or women were more up for trying hypnosis. Chris does seem to have a real talent for talking to people he doesn't know, I have the hand that one to him, and once he'd started I was able to join in. In the event the group were friendly enough, and we got nervous smiles off the four girls at least, but it soon became clear that none of them were interested in being hypnotised.

It's easy to play the in hindsight & what-if game. What if we'd opened with a different line? What if we'd persisted a little bit more and asked why they weren't keen? In my experience people who say no are nearly always wishing that someone else is up for it so they can watch, so maybe we could have played on that? Lessons for next time I guess.

We wandered around a bit more but we ran out of time before we found another group that I felt happy approaching (it was my turn). All in all, London just felt too large and unfriendly and the student population seemed almost non-existent, if not just highly diluted.

Once again I found myself wishing for the pubs of Oxford. Chris seemed keen to come and try this too, although I'm now afraid that having said how good a hunting ground it is it will actually turn out to be disappointing on the night we try. It shouldn't be though, twice on weekday evenings during my previous excursions I've found conditions to be almost perfect, barring my own hangups of course.

Anyway, I'll be in Oxford on Wednesday so with any luck I'll get the opportunity to face my confidence demon again then.