Back to Front

With the room set up in reverse, the scene was well set by Toastmaster Kim for a challenging back to front meeting.  The meeting closed on time with Toastmaster Kim calling Wayne backwards to remind us what the mission had been for the evening.

Awards were presented for:

• Table Topics – Chris Heath
• Contribution – Dee Ford as General Evaluator

The General Evaluator for the evening, Dee Ford, came backwards and gave a descriptive and well planned evaluation, which included the commendations for the Table Topic Evaluation duo of Netta and Steve; Dee also evaluated the two speech evaluators, Craig and Sarah H.  Dee described how Craig was moved to tears during his evaluation of Sarah Lee’s speech, whereas Sarah H was moved to mimicking Amy’s speech by singing in the style of a rap musician.  Dee summed up by commending Toastmaster Kim for her meticulous planning and enthusiastic running of the meeting.

Tony as Grammarian summed up the aha's, um's and moo's and the use of word of the day “Reversal”, and commented on the vocabulary used during the meeting.

Netta and Steve gave a well thought out evaluation of the second session of Table Topics:

• Netta congratulated Table Topic Master Chris for a well run session.
• Steve commended James on speaking English for a change and recommended that when he got stuck for ideas to talk about work (and that would also to help put the audience to sleep)
• Peter was commended for his superb and contortionist like use of body language, with a recommendation for greater vocal variety
• Christine was commended for her passion, with a recommendation that she point to the audience for inspiration.
• Graeme spoke with his usual humour and used a foray of fantastic facial expressions.
• Sheryl was convincing as a true believer of RAP – the Realistic Accounting Party
• Rebecca had excellent pace, recommendations included use of floor space and relaxing her hand grip
• Colin’s table topic was riveting but Steve reminded him it was a toastmaster audience and not to get too carried away.

Craig did a superb job of evaluating Sarah Lee’s reading speech project, commending her on a great use of pace, pause and vocal variety. His recommendation was to cut some out and make it a bit shorter, and perhaps retype text in a larger font to make it easier to read rather than from the book.

Chris was Table Topic master and dressed appropriately for a backward meeting, He used Fortune Cookies for the theme.  The second session included:

• James speaking on how a full bucket has no noise, an empty bucket has no noise but a half full bucket is very noisy.  James related this to NZ Politics and that the antics by various parties over issues often creates noise.
• Peter was missing his glasses so had trouble reading from the outset, then got his circum- mixed up (circumcised vs circumstances), while his fortune cookie melted in his hand.
• Christine spoke enthusiastically about how something exciting or miraculous happens every day and how fortunate we have been with the spring days in the middle of winter.

Christine

• Graeme spoke on he who hesitates is lost.  He preceded with a slightly long winded story on his new automatic car and how he ended up hitting a bus.

Graeme

• Sheryl spoke on thinking with the mind or thinking with wishes or fear and gave examples of her children.
• Rebecca’s cookie fortune was “sorrow is the only truth”. She had a waffle which generated some laughs before backing off the stage.
• Colin had waited patiently for a long time to be first. His topic was advancing socially without any special effort. Colin agreed it was often the reverse today with people expecting reward before work/effort. Colin digressed to talk about the Collins dictionary and then spent the rest of his speech eating his cookie.

Chris and His Fortune Cookies

Chris proceeded to introduce his fortune cookie theme for table topics, explaining the background behind the cookie and then gave some examples of what he thought would be great fortune cookie messages like “don’t fry bacon in the nude”.

Sarah Lee was our second speaker, backing on stage she presented the back of the book she was going to do from her advanced manual – Interpretive Reading.  Sarah introduced her book 'The Book Thief' and delivered a mesmerising reading from it. Sarah used terrific vocal variety, pace, pause and rhythm that gave tremendous impact to the rich text. Sarah did an exceptional job of backing that up with body language which created a superb visual experience to match and conveyed the meaning of the text. Well done Sarah.

Craig introduced Sarah Lee by opening with a backward read sentence.

Sarah Hall used humour in her evaluation of Amy’s speech. Sarah commended Amy on her use of stage and acrobatics stunts with the chairs.

Evaluator Sarah

The business session was presented by Craig.  Business items included:

• 4/8 Awards dinner to be held at the Boardwalk
• Reminder 3 weeks till the next meeting (14th July)
• Craig has a spare seat in his car to go to Dannevirke on 4th July to join their club training.
• Craig was presented with his first CC certificate.
• Richard Cook advised the meeting it would be his second to last meeting as he will be moving to Wellington and will be joining a club down there.  We wished Richard the best of luck for his future and agreed he would really be missed at the club.

Our first speaker for the evening was Amy who was “Leading by Example”.  Amy started slower and more subdued than normal and that matched her words of feeling hollow with a lack of substance.

Amy

Amy went on to completely captured the audience’s attention when she performed a theatrical, entertaining and challenging drama class exercise she had given her students.  Amy’s message of connecting with people, practice what you preach and be a reflection of what you want to see clearly came through in her summary.

Sarah Hall introduced Amy’s 10th speech from her CC with the same touches of humour she used in her evaluation. Netta and Steve presented their evaluations of the first table topic session:

• Sarah Hall gave a great speech but had a few too many expletives.
• Dee was commended for dressing the part of a sewage inspector but went a little overboard on explaining the smells
• Kim was commended for her multi talented miming skills
• Steve as the first speaker was commended for the use of descriptive language
• Chris was commended on a no theme table topic and on running a session with no scene set

Chris took to the stage again with his fortune cookies for the first table topic session.

• Sarah had extraordinary facial expressions as she filled her mouth with cookies and mumbled inaudibly while pacing back and forth across the stage. However some in the audience thought she made more sense than usual
• Dee complained through her speech that someone smells and was trying to work out who and what the smell was
• Kim gave an interesting sort of dance (mime?) which depicted a caterpillars end of the world is what a master would call a butterfly.
• Steve talked us through a childhood journey with his father to the abattoir where there was a lot of “stuff” all over the place.

Dee came back as General Evaluator and explained her role for the meeting.  She was joined by Kane and Paul as timekeepers and Kane aptly predicted the meeting would run over time.

Paul and Kane

Grammarian Tony introduced his word of the day. “Reversal” and told the audience what he would be looking for.

The meeting Begun on time with Toastmaster Kim warmly welcoming everyone, reading the apologies and presenting awards:

• Best Speaker:  Sarah Lee
• Best Table Topic:  Peter Manson
• Best Evaluator:  Sarah Hall

A Back to Front Challenging evening that kept every one thinking and on their toes through out!

Well done Kim and everyone involved!

Sheryl Mackie