Male Eye Candy
Some of the drawback of holding meetings in the summer is that people are busy with other commitments. Tonight’s meeting was small but what it lacked in quantity was more than amply made up in quality!
Our President, Teresa Dukes, called the meeting to order at 7.15 introducing Phil Zoio as our Toastmaster for the night and the meeting got underway with him giving apologies and highlighting various areas of the evening’s agenda. This followed on with him asking each member to state their personal Toastmaster goals for the remainder of the year. This information would then be used to help the committee formulate the club goals as well.
Phil next introduced Mike Watts as the evening’s Wordmaster. Mike had chosen MIRE as tonight’s word which means swamp or bog or involved in difficulties. The idea is that everyone tries to incorporate the word into their conversation with the view to widening their vocabulary.
Jeff Bartrop, Vice President Education, was next introduced. Jeff's role is to give tips, techniques and training to members so that they can improve their public speaking. He gave ideas on how to come up with possible speeches and how to stall for time to give yourself those extras few seconds to compose yourself. He reminded us about breaking the speech into beginning, middle and end and about making a big entrance, grabbing people’s attention and speaking with passion.
Phil next introduced Debs Lawrence with her table topics for the evening. This proved to be the usual entertaining part when individuals are asked to speak, unprepared, for 2 minutes on a given subject. Dinesh Bhuyan was first, talking about his favourite job for the Indian Government following his I.T. degree. I followed next talking about my favourite book. Ian Read then talked about his favourite holiday which was when he visited Berlin whilst still at school, passing through Checkpoint Charlie and all for the amazing price of £75.00!
Jeff entertained us on his favourite methods of transport which involved his 1967 split screen camper van and his Vesper Scooter. Martin Kayabe delighted us with his favourite activities of drinking and betting in France and Teresa told us about her favourite celebrities. She amused us with her term ‘eye candy’ and put forward that Sean Connery and Keanu Reeves had this, whilst Fred Astair and Ginger Rogers were inspiring.
Steve Bell and Ian Read concluded the first half with the timekeeper’s report and the evaluation of the table topic speakers, respectively.
Teresa started the second half with her details of club business. She proudly announced that the club was the fastest growing new charter club in our district and that as the Toastmaster year runs from 1 July she would be exchanging places with Jeff from the following week. Jeff added that a new notice board would be put up containing club information and Steve Bell, treasurer, went over the club accounts. The new committee will be:
President -Jeff Bartrop
Vice President Education - Teresa Dukes
Secretary - Sue Coppens-Browne
Vice President PR - Debs Lawrence
Treasurer - Steve Bell
Vice President Membership - Howard Smith
Phil gave a vote of thanks to the outgoing committee.
The 3 speakers for the evening, with their prepared speeches, were next introduced by Phil. Each speaker was first introduced by an evaluator who explained the aims of the speech. Martin gave his ice breaker speech giving us an insight into his early life in Kenya then his move to the UK. He was followed by Dinesh who gave his second speech and told us of his early days in Ipswich and of the difficulties of renting a house in Kesgrave. Fiona Powell changed the tempo completely with her advanced speech about Jerome K Jerome’s amusing book Three Men in a Boat. The three evaluators highlighted the points of each speech which they enjoyed and gave suggestions for further improvement.
The Wordmaster gave his evaluation on the use of the word MIRE, other phrases that he had enjoyed and reminded everyone on their hums and aahs. He then continued giving a general evaluation on the evening by reminding us to use open hand gestures, vocal variety, eye contact and remembering to say something good about the speech when evaluating.
Phil announced that I was the winner of the Table Topics competition then brought the meeting to an end at 9.30 after an enlightening and entertaining evening.
Margaret Stanway
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