Dancing, Mentoring and Snoozing - 2nd March 2022

 

Pat stood in as President, welcoming all members and guests.  As Toastmaster for the evening, Máire chaired the first part of the meeting, first introducing the officers, who described their roles.

Astrid chaired a great Topics session and got everyone interested. Topics included “What did you do for pancake Tuesday?”, “What is your favourite stall at Galway market?”, “How do you think people will cope with the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions?” and “What is your signature dance move?”.  Unfortunately we didn’t get to see Martin’s dance moves from his younger days.

Speech 1 by Jenny, was entitled “The Unexpected Mentor”.  It was a brilliant speech where she wonderfully described her mentor Martha from when she worked in a pharmacy as an assistant.  Martha was always very encouraging, giving inspiration and guidance, with a can-do attitude and saying “why not?”

Lorraine visiting online from another club delivered Speech #2: “Lazy Snoozin’”.  A very funny speech giving an account of how she pressed the snooze button one too many times and got into trouble for sleeping on.  However she also gave us a deep understanding of how we should try to see “the other side of the coin” and our way of looking at things isn’t always what they seem to be.

The last speech of the evening was delivered by Pat, who gave us a great account of “The Lost Legend of Wys and Icks”.  Wys and Icks were twins, a girl and a boy, also spirits with different viewpoints: Wys’s philosophy of “what you see is all there is” contrasted with Icks’ way of thinking “I can see it, so you can see it”.  People struggle with these points of view every day but if we’re aware of them we can control them.

After the break, Frances chaired the second part of the meeting as General Evaluator.  Martin evaluated Jenny’s and Pat’s speeches and Niamh evaluated Lorraine’s, both giving very positive feedback.

Lorraine B did Creative Corner with a lovely poem called “Smile” by Spike Milligan, where smiling is infectious, even more so now hopefully with face masks coming off.

Grammarian: The word of the night by Lachlan was “Panacea” which was used a few times throughout the evening.

Ah-Counter: The lack of filler words was good, but a few ahs and ums here and there.

A very enjoyable night – next meeting 16^th March 2022