Melting
There were plenty of heat exchanged in this evening's meeting, not because of any good will, but because of the sweltering weather which set a theme for much of the speaking. Toastmaster for the evening was Dinesh Bhuyan, who began by asking everybody to introduce themselves with a brief description of their summer activity. Amongst the various activities Jeff Bartrop noted that his was “Melting”.
Some improvisation was required to fill the missing role of Wordmaster. Luckily, Debs Lawrence was ready with a substitute word, “intercourse”. Unsurprisingly it generated a few more innuendos than the average Toastmasters word for the evening. For the most part, however, usages were limited to polite references to “social” intercourse.
Debs then did the Hints and Tips slot on impromptu speaking, specifically for Table Topics. She summarised her suggestions with the five words: listen, perform, confirm, tell and end, and built a useful set of suggestions around these.
This led aptly onto the Topics session, billed as a “Tropics” session with a temperature-based theme. Speakers were asked to draw their topics, written down on strips of paper, which meant even less think time than usual preceding speeches. Nobody got hot under the collar, though. Ian Read who was reminded of chemistry lessons at school by his topic “Boiling Point”. Chris Tremlett spoke of “Heated Exchanges” in a domestic situation arising from different tastes in evening TV watching. Jeff Bartrop drifted into wintry forests during his talk on “The Advantages of Being a Polar Bear”. Jon Rowe soared entertainingly into different territory with an aerial theme for his topic “1 degree below”, the angle pointing to East Anglia's ugliest building. Theresa Dukes spoke about the things one could do in “Sitting in a Freezer” in a restaurant in summer in North Carolina. Phil Zoio used his topic “Absolute Zero” as a convenient excuse for saying “Absolutely Nothing” after saying everything he had to say. In spite of stiff competition, Jon was voted clear winner for the evening.
Debs did an encouraging evaluation before the tea break. As general evaluator of the evening Jeff Short later put it, Club Business “degenerated into laughter” and was less boring than usual.
After this came the prepared speeches. Sue Coppens-Browne burst into the 9th speech from the manual by singing the title of her speech, “Mad Dogs and Englishmen” (go out in the midday sun). She persuaded with power on the benefits of thinking of being pale skinned, of being “seekers of shade and lovers of the siesta” instead of sun worshipping. Fiona Powell was next with the task of bringing history to life through storytelling, to which she responded with an entralling account of the life of the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh. Finally among the prepared speakers, in a speech entitled “I Was There”, Ann Nunn spoke of how she was present when Doris Lavell introduced the Cha Cha Cha to dance teachers in this country 1960. Positive and encouraging evaluations for the prepared speeches were Theresa Dukes, Jeff Bartrop and Caroline Stone, respectively.
Marie Miller stepped in to do the Wordmaster's evaluation, and Jeff Short rounded off the evening with a general evaluation with some hard hitting observations, softened by his usual good humour.
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