Epsom Speakers Club meeting Monday 5th February 2018
Firstly, I do want to reiterate what I said last night. I am truly grateful for Epsom Speakers Club, the heritage that it has passed down to us, and the people who share that history today in the terms of members of our club. Without the members, there would be no club. Without the committee, there would be no organisation of the meetings, and without the heritage, we would be a fledgling club just starting out on the Toastmaster journey. As a member of Epsom Speakers, you know there is a great history behind us, and a bright future ahead of us. All the tools are there for you to look inside yourself and bring the greatness out from within. We are all here to help with that personal journey of public speaking and leadership. Rest assured that you have a diligent committee working hard in the background to keep this all alive. And I will say again, a big thank you to George Hollis for his donation of £1,000 to the club in his will.
We were given a great treat last night with Patrick Ebbs as our Toastmaster. Patrick is a very experienced Toastmaster and has encouraged me greatly as I keep trying to get better at public speaking. Patrick showed us his gravitas last night as he held the stage and ran a very entertaining evening. Patrick’s team was also on good form, from Paul D setting up the room, Rick H, who was first time up as timekeeper, Phoebus as videographer, and of course all the members on the agenda.
Chris Terry opened up the proceedings with his first warm up. Chris was looking for holiday suggestions to take his young family on. It was a great warm up, as everybody spoke well. Many ideas were given to Chris to help him find the perfect destination for his holiday. Then came the speakers.
First up was Justin with his C9 entitled White Dune Kite Camp’. I can’t believe Justin has already reached his C9. The speech was a little bit of a sales pitch, which Amanda quite rightly stated that this is frowned upon. But Justin did get away with it, and it certainly made me think about what his Sister and associates are trying to do. It certainly looks like an interesting holiday idea if you want an action holiday. Wall to wall sunshine all year round sounds great to me also.
Katie performed her C6 entitled ‘The big 5 – 0. ‘ This speech was a list and again Amanda showed here experience by saying lists are usually frowned upon at Toastmasters. Again Katie did make it work in her usually upbeat manner. It was a touching speech. Also what is wonderful to see is two relatively new members proceeding through their manuals and learning the skills necessary to become a great public speaker. So well done to Katie and Justin for providing us with the speeches for the evening. Please, please, please try to keep to time. It is important for many reasons.
Charlie presented an educational about the Youth Leadership Programme that we participated in at Woodcote School. It really was a life changing experience for the young people who took part. The pupils grew in confidence, stature and speaking abilities while we were running the programme. Charlie reiterated that so well during this educational. The Youth Leadership Programme is a great way to help young people empower themselves so they can say what they feel, in a confident articulate way. So thank you Charlie for your educational, and thank you for organising the meetings at Woodcote.
There were no winners of the speech contest as all speakers went overtime.
Then came the evaluations. David Lane started the evaluations. David was evaluating Justin and gave us a very insightful look at Justin’s speech. He gave Justin some very good commendations, but did say he wanted to feel more of the emotions of a story in the speech to persuade him further that we all should go on a holiday like this. David has grown well with the club and is a very keen Toastmaster. This really showed on Monday, so thank you David for your valuable contribution.
Next up was Doris with her evaluation of Katie. Again Doris is a very experienced Toastmaster and gave Katie many commendations. I also agree with Doris saying Katie could have gone into more details of just a few of the points, than going through all 50. Maybe that would have lost some of the idea of the speech, but it certainly was food for thought. Doris went onto win the evaluation contest. Again Thank you Doris for your great contribution to the evenings agenda.
Last up was David Goodman. David also did a great evaluation of Charlie’s speech. Dave was on the team at Woodcote School. We did have a little more information given about the experience. David found some good recommendations as well as commendations for Charlie. Thank you David for your contribution to the evening.
After the break we had the topics session. Costa ran the session. It was a thoughtful topics session looking at balance in certain aspects of life. We had many participants, both new and old members alike. We also had guests participating. Costa achieved his objectives as Topics Master as all the speakers managed to speak on their given topics. We done Costa. The winner of the topics was a guest called Chris.
Aishi was the topics evaluator. Aishi is also now one of the more experienced Toastmasters at Epsom, and gave us a very funny and insightful evaluation of the session. Aishi has a lovely way about him that is funny and entertaining, while he manages to get important points across. Thank you Aishi for your contributions to the evening.
And lastly, we had Amanda as General Evaluator. Amanda gave us an insightful evaluation for the evening. Many commendations and recommendations were given. Amanda is another very experienced Toastmaster, and she showed it with her General Evaluation. Thank you Amanda,
Patrick did mention at the end that many people had left during the break. I do not feel that this was not a reflection on the evenings proceedings. I feel that this was due to people having busy lives. So keep moving onwards and upwards and I look forward to seeing you at the next meeting on 18th February, where Penny Williams is going to be our Toastmaster.
Keep on shining.
Kind regards,
Peter. 🙂
El Presidente.