The Loo Seat Question
August 24, 2005
August 24th 's meeting had a fine mixture of good speeches, helpful evaluations (and an inaugural after meeting trip to the pub for some).
Toastmaster for evening was Mike Watts, who conducted proceedings with wit and aplomb, perhaps surprising since he had spent most of the summer “living in a horsebox”. That clearly led him to consider what would be his perfect holiday would actually be, his choice of subject for all present to remark on during introductions.
The evening's Wordmaster Jon Rowe explained how his role was to identify unusual, interesting or clever uses of language, “ums” and “ahs”, and not least, uses of his selected word for the evening. Jon chose 'Spectacular', “a positive and uplifting word” which “conjured huge images and thrilling events”. No shortage of inspiration there for following speakers.
Table topics were led by Ian Crane. His seven victims were each asked to speak for two minutes on a an object chosen from a lucky dip. These included a trainer's pointer, a cuddly toy giraffe, a fibre optic light, an anti-sea sickness wrist band, a plastic clip, a cloth fish and a Duracell-coloured torch - “an astonishing range of items”, as Mike Watts put it. All the speakers rose to the challenge, coming up with colourful descriptions such as “chromium plated telescopic pointer” and “trivial use of fibre”.
Sue Coppens Brown followed this with a well-constructed and thoughtful evaluation, offering a good mix of praise and helpful advice to all of the speakers, bringing the meeting to its mid-evening break precisely on time at 8.10 pm.
Club business was fairly curtailed due to the absence of both the club president, Jeff Bartrop, and former president, Teresa Dukes, although toastmasters were reminded of the upcoming humorous speech competition and encouraged to throw their hats into the ring.
Eleanor Ramsey delivered the first of the prepared speeches, interesting entitled “The loo seat question”. She explored the idea that when men leave the loo seat down or leave the lid off the toothpaste tube, they are doing so not because they are lazy, but through thoughtfulness and consideration. The actions are mistakenly interpreted as laziness because the logic of their intentions are misunderstood. Very original, certainly.
The second speech was by Raj Mistry, who like Eleanor was on the 3rd speech of the starter manual. Raj is a passionate diver, and spoke about the slightly shallower (in the nicest possible way) pastime of snorkeling, in a speech entitled “Come and Explore a New World”. Raj explained what equipment was required for visiting a spectacular underwater world by demonstrating the fin and the mask, known more commonly outside diving circles as flippers and goggles.
The final prepared speech had Jeff Short coming to the lectern, dog collar and all, to talk humourously about “The Religion of Retail Consumerism”. Having identified that more people go to Tesco on Sunday than church, Jeff delivered a service aimed Tesco worshippers. The speech was peppered with plays on the language of religion. Tesco would lead us to “still and sparkling waters” and “deliver us from Asda”. Beneath the humour, some serious points were made: “Blessed are the poor, for they shall accept the minimum wage, and blessed are the poor, for they shall not bother customer services.”
The prepared speeches were evaluated in a positive and articulate way by Ian Read, Fiona Powell and Frances Crane, respectively.
John Rowe then gave his Wordmaster's report, pointing to some interesting turns of phrase used during the evening, as well as uses of the word spectacular (for Jon a disappointing seven in total).
Dinesh Bhuyan as General Evaluator followed this with his overall impressions of the evening, and his evaluations of everyone who hadn't been evaluated so far, including the Toastmaster, Topics Master, Word Master and the speech evaluators.
Before the meeting was closed, it was left to Ian Crane as Topics Master to present the Table Topics award, which went to Jon Rowe for his speech on a plastic clip. Perhaps not a spectacular topic, but somehow inspiring a speech worthy of votes from his fellow toastmasters.
Phil Zoio
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