PJs and more!

As a fun theme for the winter solstice we had a PJ party, Members were encouraged to come dressed in their bedtime finery and we had onesies, PJ's and dressing gowns that made one wearer, Tony, look like a much younger Hugh Heffner. 

Our Toastmaster for the evening was Jan, and she ran a very steady ship. We were all in good hands. Our timers for the evening were Craig and Ros who both ably manned the timers and the lights and reported at the end of the evening how we had all done with keeping to time.

Graeme stood in at short notice to introduce our first speaker, Peter M. Graeme's introduction was concise and covered the necessaries. Peter delivered in his confident laid-back style and toastmasters can learn about public speaking from observing him speak. 

Karen B was the second speaker introduced by Jane H. Karen is making her way up the leadership path of Pathways and she delivered a speech recalling the planning of her wedding in Italy, of all places. This was delivered with great humour and theatrics – the image of the latrine attendant slumping in the chair will stay with all those present for a long time. Her preparation and props were to be commended. While evaluating Karen's speech Jane nearly exceeded the club record by taking 4:58 minutes to evaluate a 7-minute speech. A timely reminder for us all in Toastmasters to keep to time.

Our Table Topics session was led by Tony F who had come up with some challenging topics to keep our members on their toes. The topics required us to think creatively and to articulately be able to convince the listeners that what we all think to be true is just a conspiracy. An example was Patrick need to convince us to believe that the earth really is flat. He did a great job but had a very intelligent audience who were not convinced. Such topics in extemporaneous speaking is great for developing our skills as confident speakers. 

Nigel and Steve evaluating the Table Topic speakers and James was selected as having given us the best Table Topic of the evening. Poor James had to speak to the topic that vinyl was the best way to listen to music. This wasn't what he believed :)

Our third speaker for the evening was Poppy, a guest from Palmerston North Toastmasters. She repeated her icebreaker and as with the delight of this first speech we got to know her a little better. She delivered confidently and secured the best speech of the night award. Actually, she had a scoop on the evening with also getting the best contribution as she had stood in when another speaker was unable to take their spot on the agenda.

Ian W evaluated Poppy in a gentle affirming way and well within time. All the evening evaluators did well in giving our speakers commendations and recommendations but the best evaluator of the evening was Steve T who showed great analytical skills while giving feedback on Tabletopics.

I know you are going to find this absolutely amazing but we also fitted in an Educational from Brenda. This was an outstanding educational and should have been recorded so others who were unable to attend the meeting could watch it. Her topic was about Controlling Your Nerves – something all of us must master if we want to be confident speakers. She gave us some fabulous strategies such as power poses, breathing techniques, isometric exercises and changing our internal dialogue e.g. instead of saying ‘I'm really nervous' say ‘I'm really excited'.  If you weren't there it was a shame you missed it.

The whole evening was conducted with a backdrop of a homemade blanket tent embellished with fairy lights – no effort spared by our outgoing president to create a realistic pyjama party vibe.

A great night had by all.