Monday, February 11, 2008

A Little Bit of History

On February 7th 1964 the Beatles landed in New York to be greeted by 3000 fans and a piece of history made. On Thursday February 7th 2008 members of Speak Easy Toastmasters gathered in The Hibernian Hotel, Mallow for their fortnightly meeting where we had our little bit of history, fun and enjoyment.


We had our usual attendance of, approx.30 members and guests who were greeted and made welcome by our President, Anne Buckley who then introduced the top table of Toastmaster for the evening, Margaret O’Regan and Topicsmaster, Sean Corcoran.

Margaret, guided us though the meeting in her efficient, amiable and humorous style and the first speaker she called to the lectern was Liam Flynn.

Liam, was completing his stage 6 speech which was entitled, “May Day” and was a well researched history of the Lifeboat Service interspersed with anecdotes both humorous and sad and made all the more interesting by Liam’s personal experiences.

Following Liam was Joe Hassett with a speech entitled, “We Couldn’t do that”. Joe delivered this speech with out notes (which was one of the aims of his project) and challenged us to look at the drug problem in Ireland in a different light. A well researched speech backed up by statistics to enhance his viewpoint.

Then it was the turn of Anne Buckley who was doing a Storytelling project. Anne had us enthralled for the duration of her speech as she told us of memories of her Grandmother and stories from the War of Independence, emigration and life in the early part of the century.

Next to the lectern was Pat Duggan. Pat is a past president of Speak Easy Toastmasters and is at present Toastmasters Area 17 Governor (North Cork) and he was doing an Interpretive Reading project. He choose to read and interpret two of Nelson Mandella’s speeches, “I am the first accused” and “Free at Last”

Our last speaker of the evening was Michael Cronin with a speech entitled “Car Trouble” in which he took a hillarious look at his experience with his car, the NCT and general maintenance.

President Anne Buckley also congratulated Michael on his nomination for the Mallow Sports and Leisure Awards which will be held in Springfort Hall on Friday 22nd of February.

After the tea break it was the turn of our Topicsmaster for the evening, Sean Corcoran who had members practicing their “off the cuff” speaking skills with topics such as, “ Dustin the Turkey and Eurosong 2008”, “little white lies”, “most useless gadget” “3 person murder mystery” and “lucky dip”.

This “Topics” section of a Toastmasters meeting usually lasts for twenty minutes after which it is the turn of the General Evaluator to conduct the Evaluation session.

This is the part of the meeting that feedback is given to those members who presented speeches, good points praised, encouragement and recommendations for improvement made.

Members who evaluate are also practicing their speaking and listening skills.

Ray Ryan Jnr. Was our General Evaluator and gave his view on how the meeting was ran, made observations on how the evaluators performed and offered suggestions on improvements.

Evaluators were, John Dillon, Tony O’Regan, Pat Sexton, Angela Sheehan and Marie Fitzpatrick.

Mary Buckley was our “Ah Counter”. This is a relatively new position in Speak Easy Toastmasters and is designed to help members improve on their speaking by reducing their use of “crutch words” like “um”, “ah”, “like” etc.

Gerry Mulcahy was timekeeper and Joe Hassett and Mary Moynahan were Sgt at Arms.

Speak Easy Toastmasters next meeting is on February 21st in the Hibernian Hotel and you are invited to come along as our guest for the evening. Don’t worry, guests are never asked to speak at a Toastmasters meeting.

Toastmaster meetings start at 8pm sharp and finish and 10pm with an optional 3rd part of the meeting in the bar afterwards for a chat.

Toastmasters is a great way to brush up on, or learn speaking skills and indeed listening skills and best of all, the skills are learned in a workshop type environment where the emphasis is on fun and friendship.

Why not give us a call and see for yourself? You won’t be disappointed.

For further information on Speak Easy Toastmasters, visit our continuously updated website at www. Speakeasytoastmasters.com or give our PRO, Sean a ring on 086 6054784

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