Galway Toastmasters 05 February 2025 - Storms, Life Support and Struggle

 It was the first Galway Toastmaster meeting after storm Eowyn. While some of the regular attendees were absent there were a few new faces.  Club President Rob spoke highly of the support East Galway Toastmasters offered to each other in clearing storm debris.  It had been a time of no electricity, water or internet and damage to many people’s homes.

He also asked if the Club would hold an evaluation contest which was voted on and approved later in the meeting. Martin Foran was elected as Vice President Public Relations.

Frances ran an entertaining Topics session.

Peter spoke about how a kind poem his uncle wrote for him during his childhood had great meaning. Mike spoke about how he would include forks, a tribute to his parent’s life of subsistence farming, in his family crest if he were designing it. For Maud the fairy tale of childhood prepared children of a life of bumps and scares as did Peter Rabbit(Bea) and Gangsta Granny(Jarlath). Christine talked of St Brigid and the changing seasons and Rob, the vegetarian, gave his thoughts on hunting.

There were two speeches.

Peter gave an icebreaker speech, which outlined a program he had developed call Le Cheile which through a four-step program hoped to lessen the impact of loneliness and develop resilience when living in life’s ‘dark forest’. The program steps are:

1 Holothropic Breathing

2 Talking

3 Search for meaning

4 Ice bath

Rob gave a well-prepared speech which he was also delivering to a larger audience in the UK the following week. It was a tale of his struggle to gain acceptance for his life as a gay man. Rob told of how from family, to society, to social media, to government obstacles to coping with your sexuality exist. Particularly worrying are decisions by social media platforms for reduced responsibility of social media content. The unforeseen consequences of Section 28 of the UK local governments act which sought to ’limit’ the awareness of homosexual development was also mentioned.

The tea-room was not available for a break which somewhat diminished the social aspect of the evening. Following a short break the were two evaluations:

Rob evaluated Peter’s seeing it as a competently delivered speech, far above the standard one would expect of an icebreaker speech and suggested possible improvements in the physical interaction with the audience.

Michael evaluated Rob’s speech. He commented on Rob’s flawless delivery and admired Rob’s honesty in talking about his sexuality in a life lived in the present time.

Concluding the evening Warren used creative corner to read out ‘well known’ speech fragments and ask us if we could name who made them.