A Meeting of Two Halves

By Sarah Hall
Greetings fellow Toastmasters!  Well, what a meeting of two halves we had last night, and Toastmasters was certainly the winner on the night!  (Not to fear, I will not be using rugby-speak throughout this report, I wouldn't do that to you all!).  Great to have two guests along - Sakiko (a Japanese exchange student staying with Danny) and James was back with bells on.

Meeting Report – 12 September 2011

What a fantastic meeting! – no surprises there. Monday's meeting was ably run by Danny, and even with four stimulating speeches, it finished earlier than usual.

Best Speaker - Emily Murray

Club Meeting August 22

Great to see so many of you along to our meeting last night, what a fun meeting it was. Graeme chaired the meeting with his usual enthusiasm and efficiency, and it was the first time I have seen the TM open the meeting only to be interrupted by a loud rendition of 'Happy Birthday To You!' Hope you had a great day Graeme!

Club Meeting August 8

It was very cold outside but the meeting inside was warm. Five visitors as well! The meeting was chaired by Christine Tutbury and the Table Topic Contest was held. Twelve members responded to the topic "What do you think will be the biggest problem of the 21st century and why?" It was chaired by Steve Tubury and won by Adrienne. Speeches made during the evening were an Icebreaker by Jeanette Neil, On Badminton by Ching Hui Chen and Choices by Chris Heath. Our Area Governor Ruth McLennan also spoke on the benefits she had gained in her role. The General Evaluation was by Pete Manson.

Club Meeting July 25

Winter has arrived but none the less the meeting happened. 20 hardy souls including five visitors attended. In the Chair was David Grant who steered the meeting through last minute apologies and a programme that gradually got further behind inspite of some trimming!Table Topics was conducted by Danny Mills and best response was visitor Andy! The evaluators were Laurance bacchus and Ian Wright who got the Best Evaluator award for the night. First speech was on Gold by Peter Manson introduced and evaluated by Colin Anderson. It got the gold for Best Speech that evening. We then had an education session from Sarah Hall on Table Topics in anticipation of the Contest next meeting.

Club Meeting July 11

A fun-filled and entertaining meeting! Chris did a fantastic job of running the meeting with a professional looking programme. It was great to see three guests along.

Adrienne presented a very topical TT session that provided the opportunity for some humorous responses and there was much laughter. We were treated to four delightful speeches from Danny,Sheryl, Bridget and Steve.

Steve's speech was an inspirational talk on giving back to the community, and the value that he's found in refereeing soccer over the years, and taking leadership roles on the committee.

The evaluations were all of a high standard, including the TT evaluations by Chess and Colin.

way many of the evaluators

Laurence presented a very thorough and helpful General Evaluation. Nick presented a very thorough TK report, and the word for the night,'meritorious', was well utilised so the grammarian (Sarah) was happy!

Awards were as follows:

Best TT: Chris Heath

Best Speaker: Danny Mills

Best Evaluator: Ian Wright

Best Contribution of the Night: Laurence Bacchus

Club Meeting June 27

The meeting was extremely well organised and run by our outgoing President Sarah, with a clear concise programme and excellent flow between the items, it was a very full meeting and yet we still ran almost to time.

The meeting commenced with Table Topics, composed by Graeme and these gave some very interesting and imaginative replies, judged the best was Jeanette Neil, who showed that in her time away from Toastmasters she has not lost her ability to speak.

The prepared Speakers on the night were of an extremely high standard. Laurence commenced with an excellent tale about being mugged. Chess followed with her 10th Speech from the Competent Communicator Manual,"The Time Is Coming" that led us on a journey to inspire us. Chess is now a COMPETENT COMMUNICATOR CONGRATULATIONS.

Peter then gave an excellent Vocal Variety speech entitled " Time To Reflect" and I could just see the meeting taking place to discuss the flooding.

The Speeches were wound up by Millie with a melodrama from the Interactive Reading Manual "War of the Worlds" very well presented on what is a difficult assignment.

The Evaluations were of the usual high standard from the Table Topics by David and Sheryl to the Speech Evaluations by Graeme, Ian,Adrienne and Bridget.

Ching-hui kept us to good time during the night and Craig had “loquacious” for word of the night.

Chris wound up with a very full General Evaluation.

The Awards for the final night went to;

Table Topics; Jeanette Neil

Speaker; Laurence Bacchus

Evaluator; Graeme Valentine

and Best Contribution; Graeme Valentine.

Club Meeting June 13

Last night's meeting was yet another in the long line of interesting, educational and entertaining meetings that this Club has become renown for! There was still an excellent turnout on a rather chilly night. It was great to see a couple of guests there.