Galway Toastmasters - 29 October 2025 - Samhain treats without the tricks

The Club President, Warren, opened the meeting and introduced the Toastmaster for evening, Maud.  She outlined her role to lead the first half of the meeting and invited each meeting officer to the lectern to outline their respective role(s); Michael, the Timekeeper, to prompt speakers with visual/audible cues to ensure they remained within their allotted time; Connie, the “Ah Counter”, to raise speakers’ awareness of usage of crutch or filler words/phrases; Martin, the Grammarian, introduced the word of the day, “Apparition”; Ali, the Scribe, to take meeting minutes; Pat, assigned Creative Corner, to share something (anything!) with the audience ;Kathy, the meeting’s Topics Master, to help us practice speaking about a topic without any preparation

The Topics session got underway with Kathy’s topics ranging from “What lights you up?”, to sense of community, to useful lifehacks. Participation was strong and members spoke passionately regarding all topics.

The evening’s first speech was an Icebreaker by Kilian, a recently joined member of Toastmasters Galway, who outlined what brought him to Toastmasters. Kilian took us on a journey of his once fear of public speaking and included several quotes from prominent businessman and historical figures to embrace the challenge of overcoming fear of public speaking.

The second speech of evening, delivered by Mark, was about embracing transition year for 4^th year secondary school students. Due to this being a Level 4 speech, it was allotted a time of 15-20 minutes and included a highly interactive Q&A session at the end. Mark used PowerPoint slides to convey his message that transition year is not a wasted year; it provides students with addition perspective regarding life outside of school and an extra year to develop maturity before embarking on the senior cycle of secondary school.

The evening’s final speech, titled “Forgotten Hero”, a story about a historical figure called Michael Lally from Tuam, was delivered by Francis. This was an advanced speech and as part of her chosen pathway. As part of the speech, Francis was required to deal with a disruptive audience. Planned disruptions by fellow toastmasters included chattering within the audience and heckling. Francis navigated through the disruptions in a cool, calm manner and successfully delivered her speech.

After the interval where toastmasters, new and experienced, mingled over tea/coffee, the speech evaluators presented their evaluations for the three earlier speeches; Pat praised Kilian’s icebreaker speaker, Helen commended Mark’s preparation and speech delivery, and Bea commended Francis’ composure and ability to remain “calm, centred and unshaken” despite disruptions during her speech.

Paul, a recent new member of Galway Toastmasters, had a Halloween themed quiz for the audience as part of Creative Corner. The audience were engaged and there plenty of laughter at some of the choices for the multichoice questions.

The meeting officers shared their findings with the audience – Word of the Day “Apparition” was used 6 times!

Warren, the meeting’s General Evaluator, commented on the meeting as a whole and the speech evaluations, providing positive overall feedback. Before finishing up, he imparted with a message to “Stay present with the audience” as a tip to his fellow toastmasters.

Martin, the Vice President of Education, took names for speakers and meeting officer roles to populate the agenda for the next meeting. All roles were filled!

Warren, this time as Club President again, closed the meeting on time.

A thoroughly enjoyable evening with fellow Toastmasters!