It may have been a chilly night outside but inside the hall it was toasty warm with the heat pumps on, great fellowship and lighthearted banter prior to the meeting being opened. Our Toastmaster for the evening Ian, had prepared a wonderful programme that gave all attendees a speaking opportunity, yet got us through the evening in plenty of time to allow for the awards presentation and some awesome food and refreshments afterwards to finish off our annual awards presentations.
Roz introduced our guest, Ellie and we also had longstanding member Patrick who kindly re-introduced himself, while having a couple of years off while building a house and raising two children, with the help of his wife :).
Our grammarian Kiri chose to introduce us to her word of the night, plethora of which there was plenty of use. Her report at the end highlighted this and the high level of use of specific phrases, as well as listening for poor use or filler words such as "um" and "ar". Good to hear she heard very few of these, showing that our Toastmasters have mastered ways around using words that do not add to their presentations.
Our time keeper, Andy, filled in this role at the last minute and presented a succinct report at the end. His duties kept us on track with the meeting running on time. Well done Andy!
Three speakers, all doing their Ice Breaker speeches, and their evaluators occupied the majority of the formal part of the evening. We were treated to three completely different Ice Breaker speeches from our newest members Ali, Arsh and Nic whose countries of origin were Samoa, India and France. What a divergence of information we learned about each of the speakers from their early childhood through to what they are now doing and reasons for joining Toastmasters. Such a range of talent with backgounds in law, IT and environmental protection. Can't wait to hear more from them.
Evaluations for all speakers were ably presented by experienced members Roz, Jan and Craig.
Our General Evaluator Steve admitted he found it difficult to decide who the best speakers and evaluators were, such was the high standard. However, a decision had to be made.
Best Speaker of the night went to Nic,
Best Evaluator went to Roz,
Best contribution of the night, decided by our Toastmaster Ian went to Kiri.
Our awards ceremony was interspersed by Table Topics run by Tony. His theme of speakers being given a year to talk on, generally 1980's to 2010's proved surprisingly difficult to speak to unless there was a significant event in their lives such as having a child. Just goes to show how we move on so readily.
The Awards were presented to those members who had excelled during the previous Toastmasters Year (2022 - 2023). They were ...................
Best Speaker; Tony Fulton
Best Evaluator; Jan Stroup
Best Table Topics; Roslynn Young
Most Humorous Speaker; Tony Fulton
Most Improved Speaker; Andy Prebensen
Toastmaster of The Year; Roslynn Young
Tracey Webster Memorial Award; Jan Stroup
Lastly, while not an award, special mention was made of Craig who had accepted the position of Area R3 Governor. What an awesome pair, our President, Jan, as Division R Director and now Craig, as Area Director. Congratulations!
While the formal part of the evening was over, the serious business of trying to eat some very delicious dishes took part. Steve with his '3 thai' dishes, sausage roles, carrot cake and many other platters were bought by our members.
😊 Thank you to everyone for making the evening one to remember and celebrate 😊.
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