16th September 2020 - International Travel, Meeting Strangers and Making your Bed

 

Martin in his role as President opened the meeting and welcomed everyone. He handed over to  and closed the meeting and thanked everyone who attended. He then handed over to Frances who was the Toastmaster for the night. She then introduced those who had meeting roles. Aisling as the Meeting Housekeeper explained how the online meeting was going to work. Our Grammarian for the evening, Eugene, introduced our word for the evening which was “Bluetooth”. He encouraged us to use it during the meeting. We also met the Ah-counter for the meeting Mohammed who explained about crutch words such as “um” and “ah” that we might use to fill in pauses while speaking.  Cormac, the timekeeper for the night, told us he would be keeping an eye on the time taken for speeches and evaluations. Finally, Frances introduced the Topicsmaster for the evening, Martin.

He then introduced a number of topics that members were invited to speak on for up to two minutes. These included:

1.       What’s something that many people don’t know about you?

2.       What are you most passionate about?

3.       What is the strangest gift you have ever received?

4.       If someone offered to tell your future, would you accept the offer?

There were also a number of add-ons for each topic after the first speaker.

When the Topics were completed Frances introduced the speakers for the evening.

Mohammed was the first speaker and he gave his speech entitled “The story of an intercontinental life.” This was the story of his life from birth to the time he moved to Galway. He had travelled widely for his education and we got a great insight into the places he has been.

Pat spoke second with a speech called “Strangers on a train” This story by Pat was about who he is. He felt he was never ready for anything that was around the corner but he believes that you have to accept things you can’t change. He also wishes he was better at predicting things that were around the corner.

Our final speaker was Margaret who gave a speech called “You’ve got to dig it.” This was was about growing vegetable gardens. She suggested a number of steps to be followed. Firstly, you should look around the garden. Secondly, you should grow vegetable gardens where the sun shines. Thirdly, you should create space. Next, make a bed. Use certified seed as these will be disease free. The bed must be 5 foot wide. This is so you can sit either side of the bed and still reach the centre of the bed. Water it and watch it grow. This speech is linked to people getting into activities during the lockdown they hadn’t done before. There was a questions and answers session after the speech.

We then had a break while the evaluators spoke with the speakers. After the break Declan took over hosting the meeting as General Evaluator. He introduced the first evaluator, Pat, who evaluated Mohammed’s speech, Jenny who evaluated Pat’s speech and Eugene who evaluated Margaret’s speech.

After the evaluations we heard from the Ah-counter and Grammarian who gave their reports. Eugene then read a poem as his creative corner piece. Following that the General Evaluator, Declan, gave his report on the meeting and made recommendations on how to improve for future meetings.

Eugene then asked for volunteers to fill the roles for the next meeting before Martin closed the meeting, thanking all who attended. It was a very enjoyable evening and our next meeting will be 30^th September.