Meeting report for 9th March by Anna Haward
Chris gave his usual sparkling President’s introduction, drumming up enthusiasm not only for the night ahead, but also the upcoming International Speech and Evaluation Competition on the 16th of March. Julie our Toastmaster announced:
“Holborn Speakers is about EXCELLENCE!!” she passionately proclaimed!
James, who doubled as Grammarian, proceeded to take a novel approach to the Word of The Day by introducing us to ‘Anaphora’, a rhetorical device where the beginning of a phrase is repeated for effect as in “We came, we saw and we conquered!” – something a Toastmaster might use to great advantage in the pursuit of excellence.
Our first Speaker of the evening was Kaveh with his 7th speech in the Competent Communicator manual. In his last speech, Kaveh spoke to us about Death and now he evidently sought to redress the balance by speaking about Life! Using examples from his job and striding about the stage with his expansive and rousing gestures, Kaveh gave an inspiring speech with great comic flair.
Next up was Ros, with a complimentary theme and a speech, also No. 7, entitled: “Happy Now?”. Ros made great use of statistics and her universally popular theme: happiness, to grip the audience’s attention. I felt her speech had a beautiful flow to it, charged with her unique brand of enthusiasm.
After these two fantastic speeches, we were treated to something a bit different from Nazia, our final Speaker of the evening. An extremely experienced member, Nazia has soared beyond the Competent Communicator manual to the Advanced Speaking manual and so we were treated to a lyrical reading of Robert Browning’s Pied Piper of Hamlyn. Nazia commanded the stage with her usual warmth.
And then, the moment everybody had been simultaneously hoping for yet praying would never actually arrive (if they were anything like me as a guest!): Table Topics! Anthony was master of ceremonies and had cleverly devised a novel theme, inspired by his profession as a practitioner of the LAW. Defending the Indefensible!
Thus followed a most amusing set of “Lawyers” defending such popular members of society as fellow lawyers, door to door salesmen, accountants, politicians and CEOs of major national banks…Each “willing volunteer” bravely strode to the stage and many “willing volunteers” were guests, giving them the chance to experience more fully what it means to be a Toastmaster, to make a mini-speech and be evaluated on it. Joga was the man tasked with this job as Topics Evaluator, not an easy job at all, but he sailed through it with his sometimes questionable humour (only kidding Joga, your jokes are great!) and easy manner.
The evening was gradually coming to a close, but before we finished, there was one more VIP to grace the stage: The GE, our very own Nigel. Nigel has been a member of Holborn Speakers since dinosaurs roamed the earth, well, a long time anyway, and this was clear in his evaluation, which was kind, fair, helpful and all-encompassing! Just what we needed to round off the evening.
That’s it from me for now. See you next week for more good old-fashioned fun (enhanced by the zest of competition)!
