"SHAKEN OR STIRRED-THOSE WERE THE DAYS!"

September 8^th meeting was chaired by Carol in a very cheerful and ‘spring’ like manner.

Our first speech of the meeting was called, “Those were the Days” and was presented by Graeme who was dressed in a pink jacket and cap just as he may well have done in his youth. He gave us several amusing accounts about his family and the infamous pink motorcycle. Laurel introduced and evaluated Graeme’s speech in a humorous, professional and helpful manner. She turned the speech objectives into questions which she then answered to show that Graeme had in fact achieved these objectives. Cleverly done!

Patrick was our second speaker and Marc introduced and evaluated him very well. Marc is a very experienced toastmaster who recently came to our club from Christchurch and he was able to explain exactly what is going on in Patrick’s life as a toastmaster. Marc said Patrick was, “brave, honest and contrite”. This certainly showed in Patrick’s speech, entitled, “Do you like it shaken or stirred?” Hats off to both Patrick and Marc.

The Table Topic session was conducted by Wendy who had each speaker choose various unknown topics from a bag and talk about them. The idea was to link each topic together and this was done very aptly by the six speakers, David, Jen, Craig, Noel, Darryl and Anna.

Table Topics is a chance to practice impromptu speaking and with six speakers this was a great example of how differently each person handles the opportunity.

Mike was responsible for the evaluation of each speaker. This can be done as a joint evaluation or as individual evaluations. Mike chose to evaluate individually.

Other highlights of the meeting were;

·        Sandy our scientist visitor joined the club, welcome Sandy.

·        And recently relocated Stephanie also visited again and said she was going to join too. Brilliant to have two more members.

·        Our club Table Topic award was back from the engravers so Craig presented it to our contest winner, Laurel. He also congratulated Laurel for her win of the Area contest and Helen for achieving the Area Toastmaster of the Year award.

As General Evaluator Helen completed the meeting by evaluating the evaluators and presenting the meeting awards.

Best speaker; Graeme     Best Evaluator; Marc       Best Table Topics; Darryl