'"TAKE CARE WITH THE DIAMONDS!"

Take Care’  and  ‘Diamonds’  were both great speech titles for this week’s speeches at Pania Toastmasters Club.

And what a great meeting room to hear these speeches, clean, tidy and always well organised thanks to, both of our vigilant members, Graeme and Ian.

Marc, our Toastmaster of the day, welcomed everyone and presented a well organised agenda which was followed by all in a prompt manner. A big thanks must go to members who step up and fill in for those who get called away suddenly, excellent team work!

David, our first speaker was introduced by Graeme in his usual professional manner. He read the objectives of David’s speech so we all knew what goals were to be reached. Graeme evaluated David’s speech by offering commendations and recommendations. He did this by using examples of various parts of the speech and offered ideas for improvements. Both Graeme and David’s contributions finished with very good endings.

Anna introduced and evaluated Barbara. Anna began her evaluation by commending Barbara on the beginning of her speech and then went onto read and discuss the objectives. Barbara is particularly clever with creating poetry and she shared part of a poem from a very dear and long time friend’s funeral service. They had known one another for 50 years hence the title, ‘Diamonds’. Anna offered a recommendation for using more pitch, pace and pause during the poetry reading. This was good information for all those who read poems/ articles during their speeches.

Table Topics was led by Jane who used some very different and thought provoking topics. Jane also gave the topic first and then the speakers name as this gets everyone thinking about what they would say on the topic.

The Table topic speakers were; Helen with “recycling bottles as they do in Australia”, Noel with “capital gains tax”, Russell with “fines for dog attacks”, Linda with “police pursuits, chasing stolen cars or lives”, Ian with “a branch line for trucks between Pan Pac and Napier Port”.

Table topics certainly had the speaker thinking. Carol who did a great job evaluating each speaker by commending them all and offering recommendations where necessary. She used positive examples for each in a clever manner.

Thanks to Rebecca for keeping time on all the speakers. Helen as General Evaluator finished the meeting off by evaluating the evaluators, presenting the awards and then Marc closed off another successful meeting right on 1pm.

Best speaker; Barbara

Best Evaluator; Carol

Best Table topics; Linda