A Bellicose Evening

Meeting of Galway Toastmasters Club January 20^th 2016

Our President Paul opened the meeting and welcomed members and guests.

He handed control over to Toastmaster for the night Rauri, who set a lighthearted tone with quotes from a book about hangover cures.  He went on to introduce the officers for the night

Our Grammarian introduced the word of the night Bellicose with meaning and examples 

Rauri then handed over to our Topicsmaster Margaret who gave a wide range of topics which generated much comment and laughter and a number of add ons.  Mike wanted to go to the furthest planet but flatly refused to take Margaret due to what he claimed was her complete lack of a sense of direction.  Liam was stunned when asked for an Oscar winning speech but quickly recovered.

We then had four prepared speeches.

  Diego gave his icebreaker speech; connect the Dots treating us to details of his journey from Uruguay to Galway hinting at many more stories to come. He finished with a quote from Steve Jobs which linked to the title of his speech,

Cian gave his stage 3 speech.  He clarified the story behind the story of Joyce’s Portrait of an Artist as being only partly autobiographical and also spiritual. He made the book sound attractive to read.

Paul chose from the Interpretive Reading Advanced Manual to give a rendering of Sometimes a Wild God. Which was very vivid and read slowly, clearly and deliberately.

Frances gave a speech from The Entertaining Speaker Advanced Manual; Need. It tracing need resulting in the YMCA and later Toastmasters International and out own club.  She finished by taking up a challenge given by Frank after her last speech to do drama in the next one.  She dramatised part of Dermot’s divisional speech final speech when he acted as a team coach to explain the stages of the CC Manual.

We than had a pleasant break, tea/coffee and a chance to chat.

The second part of the meeting started with the evaluation of the speeches

Margaret gave a very encouraging evaluation of Diego’s Icebreaker with a good suggestion for improvement

Joseph gave a good evaluation of Cian’s stage 3 which showed that he had listened well and understood the concept; he also had a helpful suggestion.

Margaret gave a humorous evaluation of Paul’s Advanced speech indication that she did not like or understand it until Paul explained that it was a metaphor.  Understanding did not change her view but she evaluated his performance and gave helpful suggestions.

Jenny evaluated Frances’s Advanced Manual speech giving positive feedback and a suggestion about time.

We then had the reports of the officers.

The grammarian Joanne gave and account of the use of the word Bellicose and also she liked the phrase” Joycian and bellicose”.

The Ah counter Ronan gave a comprehensive account of our ahs and ums showing he had been listening well.

Then we were treated to the creative corner with Trevor reciting Seamus Heaney’s poem “When all the others were away at mass”.

Liam gave and evaluation of the evaluators and of the meeting in general.

The Toastmaster then gave control back to Paul who closed the meeting

An enjoyable evening with plenty of humour.