It's a Leap Year!

‘What would you do if you had one free day?’ That was our warm up question, posed by Sharon. All at the meeting gave a short answer. Just about everyone said they’d do whatever they enjoyed doing when they relax – only one answered that he’d get some jobs done.

Paul is our Sergeant at Arms and opened the meeting on time. Flavia, our President welcomed our guests and explained how Toastmasters works. Anne was the Toastmaster for the first time and led us through the meeting with her wonderful team of members fulfilling the various roles.

Our first speaker was Pat, giving her Icebreaker speech.  John was her evaluator and noted how she gave us a fairly long introduction about how and why she joined Toastmasters, before she raised our attention level by saying ‘Hello’ and  launched into her subject of ‘Living Your Purpose’.  She was confident and spoke with an even pace, maintained good eye contact with her audience and only referred to her notes a few times.  She had a very strong message, explaining how she’d found her purpose of promoting health and how we all need to find our purpose in life. She made good use of humour and left us all eagerly awaiting her next speech.

Philip, a very experienced speaker, entertained us with his speech ‘A Proposal’. He chose to demonstrate vocal variety, as per speech 6 in the Competent Communication Manual. He told us a comic tale of when a female friend tried to take advantage of the 29^th February, leap year tradition of women initiating wedding proposals – and how it all went horribly wrong. He was very animated using a loud, then a quiet voice as he took us through the various reactions as the story unfolded and negotiations progressed. She was hoping to get a free pair of gloves, as is the tradition if a man refuses the woman’s proposal – but he confounded her by saying ‘yes’. Paul evaluated Philip and admitted that he found it hard to make recommendations for such an entertaining and experienced speaker.

James lead the Table Topics with a wonderful set of questions around it being a leap year: having an extra day; leaping; and even a bit of time travel. He explained each question with a metaphor, helping the speakers to compose their short, impromptu speeches.

Julie was our Grammarian and was particularly impressed with Vivian’s use of her word of the day ‘embrace’ – seven times during her Table Topics speech. Sharon was the Timekeeper, as well as Warm-up Leader, so she reported back all of the times for the evening.

Richard evaluated the Table Topics and Jason was our General Evaluator. Some of their comments included: the Toastmaster needs to always lead the applause; and recommendations given should be addressed to all of the audience, not just the person who has spoken. They praised Julie for not only noting that James used metaphors but she also explained what metaphors are for our greater understanding; Paul’s mimicking of some of Philips body movements when evaluating his speech helped us to recollect what we’d seen and how it enhanced his message.

It was John’s birthday, so we ended the evening with a chorus of Happy Birthday!!

Next meeting - the International Competition - 2 March. Get in touch if you want to speak or be a judge.