ESC Club meeting 18th February 2019
It was a full house on Monday, we were pleased to welcome many guests and it was great to have them participating so fully in the meeting. Penny Williams was our able and experienced Toastmaster for the evening, leading a team of:
John Drinkwater as our lively new Sergeant at Arms (multitasking as Timekeeper), Elizabeth Bennett as ballot counter, and Kim Pleatman as videographer.
Willorna Brock gave us a great ‘Warm-up’, all present invited to describe their ‘bucket list’ holiday destination. Thoughts of warm and exotic places alongside attractive home locations to drive away thoughts of winter.
We had a packed program of speakers: Ian Upton, experienced speaker now starting on the ‘Pathways’ education program gave us his Icebreaker: ‘Essence by Ian’, entertaining us with hints of domestic life. Gary Argent followed with ‘Eat to live, or live to eat?’ exhorting us to cook and enjoy our own good food. Matthijs Houweling gave a thoughtful speech ‘Is having a mentor really worth it?’, emphasising the two-way relationship involved, with hints to make the most of this. Dave Goodman, finally, spoke on ‘Stylin’ it’ – great stories illustrating the places where differences in communication style can really cause problems!
Matt Tuff evaluated Ian’s speech, Phoebus Apostolidis, Gary’s speech, Paul Dowdeswell evaluated Matthijs and I evaluated Dave’s speech, all in good Toastmasters tradition, picking out what was best and giving one or two hints for improvement.
After the interval, our Topics Master was Paul van der Hagen, with a general theme of ‘groups of two or three’, asking volunteers to choose their favourites. All managed to face the challenge of impromptu speaking – congratulations especially to our guests! Always a fun session.
Mark Peacock was Topics Evaluator – his first time. It is a challenging role, to find a commendation and recommendation for each speaker, but Mark did a thoroughly professional job.
Finally, Doris Sew Hoy was General Evaluator, with many useful hints and tips to improve our meetings – I’m very grateful to her!
Winners are:
- Best Speech: (draw between) Ian Upton and Gary Argent
- Best Evaluation: Phoebus Apostolidis
- Best Topic: (draw between) Bev (guest) and Charlie Warshawski
Congratulations to our winners, to everyone who helped out, and to everyone who took part!
Our next meeting will be on Monday 4th March, when the Toastmaster will be Dan Magill
At the following meeting on 18th March, we have our Club International Speech and Evaluation Contests.
Please contact me if you would like to take part. We still have one or two spaces for speakers, and it is always interesting to take a meeting role, if you aren’t speaking.
I look forward to seeing you all next time!
Gillian Prior
President
Photo by Tyler Callahan on Unsplash