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.