Superwoman, daddy pig, a dodgy handshake and some meta-search.

Thanks to all who embraced the heatwave and attended last night’s meeting of West Herts Speakers.

Luckily JJ – our toastmaster for the evening – coolly steered us through the proceedings of a delightful evening.

We started off on a high with an energetic and rather challenging table topic session masterminded by Yogesh on the theme of ‘Strange but true’.

During this session Monica gave us the lowdown on why she’s clearly a superwoman, meanwhile Spencer let rip about a ‘thing that is both embarrassing yet healthy’. Tom told us all about his exploits getting lost in London on a ‘tipsy night out’, Lisa talked of the privileges of being a woman, and Anthony told us how a handshake with Rio Ferdinand didn’t quite live up to his expectations.

And all that before we even got onto the prepared speeches!

Our first speech was from Jenny, who talked about how her life has changed since becoming a mum, and how parenthood eventually led her to joining Toastmasters. She used very clear structure in her speech – time, social life, outlook on life – and nicely linked her topic to her Toastmasters journey.

Our second speech was from Aga who gave the audience a quick primer in the use of meta search engines and Boolian search logic. She successfully educated the audience on these fascinating topics.

Our evaluators Spencer and Matthew both gave considered and balanced assessments of the prepared speeches.

Thanks to all other that performed roles:

 

Ajert – grammarian

Paul  – timekeeper

Judy – table topics evaluator

Gwendoline – general evaluator

Lynne – ah-counter (full marks for adopting a very topical gold, silver and bronze scoring system!)