Our 6th Birthday Celebrations!

What a night we had with our 6th birthday celebrations of the Lewisham Toastmasters club!

Richard Green gave a very warm welcome introducing our birthday as the club was born on the 19th November 2008.

Our very own VPE Phillip Langerdon was and deserved to be Toastmaster this evening as he was the founding partner of our club 6 year ago alongside Chris Howell who unfortunately couldn't be there this evening. It was wonderful to have Phillip as toastmaster on such a special occasion and he did us all proud as always with his charasmatic leadership skills and excellent hosting.

Chris Douce led the warm up asking us to all share a memorable birthday - Jason's was a parachute jump, mine was getting drunk and being locked up in a cell for the night and others ranged from eating dinner at Zizzis to a week in the Maldives with rose petals and banana leaves on their bed.

Our three speeches of the evening were all brilliant icebreakers by our new members, Robert, Suresh and Judith.

Robert told us his interesting story about coming from Grenada in the Caribbean to the UK and meeting his beautiful wife. He shared with us some African history from Zambia and Zimbabwe and his main message was how he didn't believe that African landmarks should be names after European travelers or monarchy. It was really interesting to hear that the real name for Victoria Falls is actually Mosi-oa-Tunya.

Suresh's icebreaker was fascinating as he shared with us his up-bringing, and how he had been brought up in a family where his father was a total disciplinarian. Suresh can do almost anything in absolute silence as this was how he was brought up until he started work at 15years old in the Indian Air Force (following his father's footsteps). He soon realised he wanted more of a challenge from life and headed overseas for his big adventures.

Judith shared with us her story of her unconventional job as an environmental scientist. She organises groups of volunteers to help clean up the grasslands of Lewisham - removing thistles and dandelions that otherwise take over entire meadows. One of the volunteers is 87 years old but extremely fit which is very inspiring!

Flavia, Katy and Julie gave wonderful evaluations of these ice breaker speeches with Katy saying how Judith's speech made her feel warm inside as she was inspired by what she does for a living.

Phillip brought in a cake that we all devoured with our tea in the break to celebrate our birthday which was so sweet of him!

Last but not least was our tantalising tabletopics which gave our guests the chance to speak sharing some brilliant ideas and stories.

Well done to everyone for a brilliant night and lots of fun as always!