This was our last meeting before Halloween and Martin, our club President, opened the meeting by reminding us that we were heading into a new year based on the ancient Irish calendar. New Year is a time when we seem to want to make changes in our lives but every day can be a New years day if we wish. He also welcomed our 11 guests who came to see what Toastmasters was all about.
Martin then handed over to a very experienced member Pat who was to be our Toastmaster for the evening. He welcomed us all again, explained the layout of the meeting and then introduced the officers for the evening. Frances was our timekeeper who would time speeches, evaluations and topics, Mohammed as Ah-Counter would keep an eye on our crutch words such as “Um” and “Ah”, Marie would give our creative corner and Martin would be our scribe to put together the account of the meeting you’re now reading. Jenny as the General Evaluator would take over hosting the meeting after the break and introduce the evaluators and the officer reports. Avril as our Grammarian introduced us to our word of the night which was “Austere” which means “severe or strict in manner or attitude”.
With the majority of officers introduced Pat handed over to our final officer being Christoffer as Topicsmaster. He gave members a number of very topical questions based around the bank holiday and Halloween. These included what we did for the bank holiday weekend, whether we considered Halloween scary or fun, what we had planned for Halloween, including pumpkins in a recipe for Gordon Ramsey and where would be the first place we’ll go after lockdown. The topics session generated a lot of interest and even some guests got involved by giving add-ons after the first speaker had finished which was amazing.
Following the topics session Pat returned as Toastmaster and introduced our three prepared speeches for the evening. He was actually the first speaker on the night. He have a speech from the Dynamic Leadership pathway called “Don’t try this at home” which suggested that we should embrace the opportunity to run our Toastmasters meetings online at the moment, while acknowledging that there are challenges. It was a very interesting and appropriate speech for a Toastmasters meeting.
Our second speaker was Molly, who gave her icebreaker speech (the first speech a member gives in the club) called “Uncover Your Potential”. It was a very interesting and inspirational speech that she had clearly put a lot of work and rehearsal into. We are all looking forward to the speeches she will make in the future.
Our final speaker of the evening was also called Pat and entitled “Happy New Year”. This looked at the ancient Irish festival of Samhain in the context of the other ancient Irish festivals of Imbolg, Bealtaine and Lúnasa. Given that we were days away from Halloween it was very interesting to reconnect with some parts of our history we may have forgotten or never knew about in the first place.
Once the speeches were completed we had a break for 10 minutes so that the evaluators could speak with the speakers and the rest of us could grab a cup of tea.
After the break Jenny took over as General Evaluator. She introduced the evaluators Carmel, Martin and Aisling. All three evaluators reread the speech objectives, praised the speakers for their wonderful speeches and gave them one or two suggestions on what they might try to do differently in future speeches.
With the evaluations over Jenny reintroduced the Ah-Counter and Grammarian who let us know how we got on over the evening. They were both happy with the number of Crutch words used throughout the meeting and with the use of the word for the night. Marie then gave us her Creative Corner which was about Positive Self Talk and the impact it can have on us. As Toastmasters seeks to improve members’ self confidence this was a great topic for this section.
Jenny then delivered her evaluation of the overall meeting. This looks at what worked well during the meeting and what could possibly be improved. It’s very important because there are always new ways we can try to run our meetings and expand our skills.
She then handed over to Pat, who stood in for our Vice President of Education, Eugene, who was unable to attend, to attempt to fill in roles for the following meeting.
Once that was completed, he handed back to our President to close the meeting. Martin thanked us all for coming and invited guests, who wanted to enquire about joining, to remain on the zoom call after the meeting closed so they could get more information. He concluded with a wish that we would all have an enjoyable Halloween and that we’d be back again for our meeting on 11th November.
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