Meeting Report 17th November 2009
Graeme stood in as President for Chris this week and started the meeting with an introduction to Toastmasters. He spoke about the beginnings of Toastmasters and how far it has come. There are now 12,000 Toastmasters clubs worldwide with a total membership of almost 250,000 people. He then passed the meeting over to the Toastmaster.
Joga, our Toastmaster for the evening, proudly displayed his facial hair that he is growing for the Movember charity event. After professionally handling some heckling from the crowd, he informed us that he would be happy to take donations and continued with the programme.
Catriona introduced the Timekeeper role by taking us back to the beginning of time with a Physics lesson that Steven Hawking would have been proud of. On returning to the timekeeper introduction she finished with “Green, Amber, Red. You know the drill!”
Jackie, our Grammarian, introduced the word of the day which was Mesmerise. After a brief discussion we decided that we preferred the British spelling to the American spelling.
Congratulations to Julie for completing her Competent Communicator manual with a great #10 speech. Julie spoke about her love of writing and words, and challenged us to do something creative ourselves.
Diana kick-started her advanced manual with an almost impromptu story about how people can change. Congratulations Diana and well done for stepping up and filling that speaking slot at the last minute.
Adrian, our Antipodean Topics Master chose a theme of winter in London. From “Where Do Leaves Go?” to “Mittens vs Gloves” and “Winter Xmas vs Summer Xmas” to “What is On Your Xmas Shopping List” it seems that Adrian is getting used to life here in London although he still pines for XMas in the sun.
Jenny and Ryan shared the Topics Evaluator Role and also shared the Best Evaluator award too, although Graeme kindly allowed Junior to bask in the glory of thinking that he’d won the Best Evaluator award for a while. For a few seconds anyway….until Junior noticed that it wasn’t his name on the award but Ryan’s. Oops. Graeme quickly took back the award and gave it to the intended recipient, Ryan.
There is no meeting next week. See you all on Dec 1st for the Holborn XMas Dinner.
