Tag: toastmasters

14th December – The longest, darkest night

Posted on

Merry Christmas and a happy new year!

The theme of the meeting on the 14th December 2022 was the longest, darkest night, with the evening led by toastmaster Ged – one of the clubs most accomplished and competent public speakers.

We had a great agenda with 3 speeches;

1 ‘Growing’ – A cracking first speech from a new member, reflecting on new paths walked and lessons learned

2 ‘Wine’ – A full exposition of the drink of the gods; Wine including a full sensory exploration of how to see, smell and taste wine!

3 ‘Life was never the same again’ – A speech taking us down memory lane from discovering rhythm and blues, to the daring exploits of pirate radios!

The word of the day

Gluttonous; excessively greedy. You might use it like this ‘a family of gluttonous eaters, drinkers and horders’. If you didn’t know it is also one of the seven deadly vices or sins, as taught in Christian teachings. The word of the day is selected by the ‘grammarian’.

Table Topics

Our impromptu, on-the-spot speeches were led by Tanzim, who asked questions related to the theme of ‘the longest, darkest night’.

Congratulations to the winners!

👏 Best Table Topic – Ryan

👏 Best Speaker – Alfred (for his first speech no less!)

👏 Best Evaluator – Paul

Interested in joining in on the magic?

As ever if you would like to join us for an evening public speaking magic please do contact us at westhertspr@gmail.com or use the contact form on the page navigation bar! We encourage guests and friends to attend (free of charge). Do contact us before hand so we can let you know what to expect

Throughout this post I’ve referred to various roles across speeches, toastmaster, table topic master and grammarian (amongst many others). These roles are open for any member to pick, and provides an opportunity to practise their public speaking!

We meet at 7.30pm on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of every month at The County Constitutional Club – St Albans. The next West Herts session will be on Wednesday 11th January at 7.30pm.

23rd November 2022 – Travelling, ‘what-ifs’ and memory lane

Posted on

The theme of the meeting on the 23rd November was celebration!

We had a great agenda with 3 speeches;

1 ‘Funny little countries’ – An examination of how travelling cultivates growth, curiosity and love

2 ‘What if?’ – A spectacular speech on the journey of life, choices and the what-ifs

3 ‘My thali days’ – The first speech and icebreaker for a new member, taking us on a trip down memory lane

The word of the day

Abberation; a departure from what is normal, usual, or expected, typically an unwelcome one.

Table Topics

Our impromptu, on-the-spot speeches were led by Matt, who asked members to share celebrations and what they were grateful for.

Congratulations to the winners!

👏 Best Table Topic – Ethan (a guest from the states)

👏 Best Speaker – Tracey

👏 Best Evaluator – Aparna

Interested in joining in on the magic?

As ever if you would like to join us for an evening public speaking magic please do contact us at westhertspr@gmail.com or use the contact form on the page navigation bar!

We meet at 7.30pm on the 2nd and 4th Wednesday of every month at The County Constitutional Club – St Albans. The next West Herts session will be on Wednesday 14th December at 7.30pm.

A night of icebreakers

Posted on

Despite many any of our regular members being away on their summer holidays, last Wednesday’s club meeting, at The Noke in St Albans, had such a buzz to it – with 2 icebreaker speeches – that you’d have thought we were all there.

‘Being British’ was the theme of the club night on Wednesday 26th July, introduced by our toastmaster of the evening Jill.

We welcomed our Area Director, Steve Campion to the meeting as the only guest of the evening.  He took on one of the evaluator roles and provided an inspiring evaluation of our first speaker Andrew, who’s experiences at a Jazz festival in Rotterdam had led him to question the adequacy in the provision of public toilets!  Steve also won Best Table Topics Speaker for his impromptu speech on his history with toastmasters.

Anthony presents Steve Campion his table topics speaker award

Chris delivered his icebreaker speech – the first speech in the Competent Communicator Manual given to all new toastmaster members.  He overcame his nerves and delivered an excellent speech, that was superbly evaluated by Corinne.

Chris breaks the ice

Then we had yet another icebreaker speech – this time for Saulius, our newest member.  Saulius’ personal story about how he didn’t become a pilot earned him the ‘Best Speaker’ Award for the night, while his evaluator Judy was crowned ‘Best Evaluator’.

Saulius wins Best Speaker for his icebreaker

Judy wins Best Evaluator

The word of the day, selected by Grammarian Matt, was ‘umbrage’ but attendees might have mistook it for ‘flannelling’ after table topics master Paul M threw some challenging questions at our more experienced club members Anthony Brennan and Judy, around the subject of how to improve toastmasters.  They handled themselves expertly, as did our other impromptu speakers Chris and Ajeet, who both made us laugh with their own personal anecdotes.

Our ‘ah-counter’ was Ryan was superb – he put a unique and amusing slant on his report back to the group about which of us had used those killer filler words: ah, ummm, like, so… etc

Ryan as ah-counter

Just when we thought we were going to finish ahead of time, our general evaluator (and resident comedy genius Paul G) decided to ignore the red light signal of timekeeper Barrie (which tells our speakers when their time is up) and treat us to a very candid, yet very humorous review of the night.

Paul evaluating generally…

Club President, Anthony Brennan, then handed out the awards and brought the meeting to a close.

Thank you everyone who attended, it really was another great night.