Sunday, April 21, 2013

Come Swim With Me

An attentive audience enjoyed a lively meeting at Speakeasy Toastmasters this week. Toastmaster Liam Flynn joined President Jerry Mulcahy and Topicsmaster Michael Cronin at the top table. Liam was in sparkling form, introducing the speakers and explaining the running of the meeting for the benefit of guests and keeping order in a most humorous manner.

There were four very interesting speeches in the first half of the meeting, and four excellent evaluations of said speeches after the tea break.
First to the lectern was Anne Walsh. In a speech entitled " the Average Consumer",Anne proved herself to be anything but, highlighting the misleading advertising of goods she observed in a supermarket and showing her knowledge of the 2007 Consumer Act. Anne's excellent speech certainly gave us food for thought and also made us aware of the usefulness of the National Consumer Agency. Mary Buckley evaluated Anne's speech.

Kieran Butler gave a wonderful absorbing speech about oratory, using the great example of Abraham Lincoln. The tips Kieran passed on courtesy of President Lincoln, were:- keep it short, use imagery, end strong and revise, revise, revise. Kieran however besides passing on these useful tips, also entertained us greatly with quotes from the great man, not just the famous ones, but amusing ones also such as "marriage is neither heaven nor hell, its just purgatory". Claire O' Connell evaluated Kieran's speech.

Brid Broderick, a most welcome guest from the Nice and Easy Club gave a beautiful uplifting, entertaining speech called "Come swim with me". In it Brid described her quick progression once she started to learn swimming to become part of the Mallow Marlins Team and to take part in the Special Olympics. Brid 's humour and talent for engaging the audience was complimented by her evaluator, Margaret O'Regan.
.
Angela Sheehan 's speech was an exercise in "accepting an award", and Angela cleverly used the acceptance of a plaque as one of the 20 Club Presidents, which she received on the 20th Anniversary Celebration Night to produce this hugely entertaining speech, which gave the audience a lovely insight into Angela's warm connection with Speakeasy Toastmasters. Tony O'Regan evaluated Angela's speech.
Interspersed, with the speeches and before the evaluations session, Topicsmaster Michael gave out a varied list of topics. Members only are asked topics and have 2 minutes to respond before the bell rings. If anyone wants to add on they can do so and have 1 minute. The topics ranged from tattoos to telepathy and drew a great response from the audience. Michael was warmly congratulated by Toastmaster Liam for his role as MC at the 20th Anniversary Celebration Night.

Rona Coughlan was General Evaluator on the night and ably managed this job of evaluating the evaluators and the meeting as a whole.
Anne O'Donovan performed the timekeeping duties. Pat Sexton was grammarian and chose" insipid" as his word for the night, and all present were delighted the meeting was the opposite as usual.
All were warmly welcomed to the meeting by guest greeters, Marie Lynes, Mary Moynihan and Ronan Condon.
Speak Easy Toastmasters meet on alternate Thursdays at 8pm at the Hibernian Hotel Mallow. Next meeting Thurs May 2nd.
Non members are most welcome and never asked to speak.
Contact Jerry 0863752895,or Noel 0872427485.
"Follow us on Facebook "Speak Easy Toastmasters", on Twitter "@speakeasytm" and our blog"http://speakeasytm.blogspot.

www.speakeasytoastmasters.com