Unforgettable

Kia Ora fellow Toastmasters and guests,

Another great TM club meeting last night! Well done Christine on doing an excellent job as Toastmaster. There were many last minute changes to the agenda last night and Christine managed those with skill. We welcomed a new guest Hamish, and welcomed back Akshay - it was great to see you both.

Christine Tutbury  – Toastmaster

Colin was our General Evaluator for the evening and he presented a very thorough evaluation of all the evaluators. He was ably assisted by our timekeeper Jan and grammarian James W (although 'vernacular' proved to be a little challenging to slot into our toastmaster meeting vernacular!).

James Ward with the word of the evening - Vernacular

Sarah presented a Table Topics session themed 'Encouragement' and all the speakers rose to the occasion with some entertaining and inspiring responses. The Table Topics session was evaluated by Emily, who advised us at the end of the night that this was her first time ever evaluating a table topics session - great job Emily!

James Kahn's Icebreaker Speech

James K kicked off the prepared speeches segment of the night with his Icebreaker speech 'My life in this little sheep country'. A colourful and informative Icebreaker speech presented with no notes - great job James, you obviously have a good array of public speaking skills already! We look forward to hearing further speeches from you and hearing more of your pharmacy exploits. Graeme presented his contest speech for this coming weekend entitled 'Unforgettable', a touching speech in which he retold a personal story. Good job Graeme, we wish you all the best on Saturday in Fielding.

David delivered 'A night to remember', a powerpoint presentation of the account of the events on the Titanic 100 years ago. (I heard on the radio this morning that in a recent survey of high school students, a number of them didn't believe that the Titanic events were real. Other students believed that the events happened, but that Leonardo Di Caprio was actually on the ship!). Delivered with typical David enthusiasm, the speech was informative and entertaining. I was looking forward to a re-enactment of the Titanic movie pose with David standing on the bow with his arms outstretched, but alas, this was not to be. Ian rounded up our formal speeches with 'It's just one of those things you do', a delightful account of the adventures of teaching his youngest daughter to drive a manual car. Loved the gestures and body language Ian, much laughter was heard in the audience throughout the speech!

The four prepared speeches were very ably evaluated by Craig, Sheryl, Steve and Chris respectively, and I felt all evaluations were of a very high standard last night.

Awards for the evening:
Best Table Topics: James Ward ('A horse trek is one of those thrilling experiences where you can live or die')
Best Speaker: Joint award for Graeme Valentine and David Grant
Best Evaluator: Sheryl Mackie
Best Contribution of the Night: Emily Murray for stepping into the role of sole TT Evaluator at the last minute and handling it with aplomb!

Best Evaluator Sheryl (right) receiving her award from Christine (left).

We wish Craig and Graeme all the best this weekend as they represent Area B4 at the Division Speech Contests in Fielding (Craig for Evaluations, Graeme for International Speech contest). Look forward to seeing you at our next Napier club meeting on Monday 30th April, 7pm at the Greenmeadows Community Centre.

Sarah Hall
VPEd Napier TM Club