Club Blog...

20 April - Conspiracy Theory

A wonderful variety of speeches was enjoyed by all at last Tuesday's meeting. Debbie, as Toastmaster for the evening, introduced speakers by describing their choice of the speech they would most like to give. These 'ultimate' speeches ranged from 'My fabulous life' and a speech contest against Barack Obama, to giving a talk to the British Bankers Association entitled 'Adding Up for Dummies'.

Brian asked volunteers to speak on delicious subjects as his Table Topics centered around food. Sue Andrews made our mouths water when she gave the winning Table Topic describing her favourite foreign meal.

Jacqui's Education Speech gave details of the Competent Leader Manual and how to make the best use of this. With her winning speech for the evening entitled 'Conspiracy Theory' Evelyn persuaded us that we were all bilingual at heart; Hilary gave Graham a roasting with her speech 'I did it my way' and Graham admitted that Hilary's description of his wayward life was all true. Chris encouraged us to get on our bikes with his speech 'The Anatomy of a Road Racing Bike'.

The speeches were evaluated by Jane, Helen and Pauline, with Helen voted as Best Evaluator for the evening. Tracy as General Evaluator summed up the evening and Grammarian Eric counted our um's and ah's and reported on our creative usage of language and who had resorted to 'arcane' methods. (DEBBIE)

10 April - An amazing day

The yearly focus of Chiltern Speakers is The International Speech Contest. This is where speakers from Windsor, Maidenhead, Marlow and Chiltern battle it out to win a place in the USA World Contest. Apart from lofty ambitions it's an inspirational event where you can hear well crafted speeches, learn from others and generally enjoy the company of likeminded folk. The Morning is organised into four speeches, a break for refreshments followed by a single target speech that's evaluated independently by four members.

Four International Speeches

The opening speech titled "Voice" by Ed Percival (Windsor) took us on his personal journey starting with the fragile "Exorcet of his childhood confidence", through 25 years of jumble, to finding "The Voice". We met the famous voice of the Simpson's, together with Brian Blessed and Paul McCartney. Ed closed with a powerful message. "Join the Great Journey- the Mighty Highway."

Sheila Hamilton-Andrews (Marlow) worked her speech around a question, "How heavy is a glass of water?" It' was interesting to see how such a simple prop gave form and weight to a message that is often ignored; lives full of clutter, missed goals and lost opportunities.

The third speech also opened with a question. "Is art the answer?" Ian Rees (Maidenhead) grappled with issues of the Soul. He intimated that we need Art for our imagination, concentration and contemplation. He closed with an illustration from his early married life when extended business trips were enlivened by receiving hand written letters from his young wife.

The last speech by Jacqui Hogan (Chiltern) again led with a question, "What if?" Just think about it next time you have road rage or Tesco rage. Why not take a leaf from John McCarthy who successfully managed his five year hostage by keeping control of his emotions.

Target Speech and four evaluations

Again this speech opened with a question "If not you, who?" and a call to action, "Listen to the voice within you." Karen Szulakowska led us through our responsibilities to ourselves, our families and friends and gave us solutions and pathways to follow. The four evaluators were Jacqui, Jan, Ian and Amanda.

The morning concluded with Prizes presented by Keith Clarke, our Area Governor.

First prize: The Area Evaluation Contest; Amanda Bouch.

First prize: The Area Speech Contest; Ian Rees

Thanks to our Chief Judge, Debbie Hunter and to Tracey Miranda, our President, who held the whole event together with novel audience warm up sessions. Thanks to Pauline Trew for refreshments. After the meeting closed many members and guests retired to our house for tea and coffee on the lawn. Really rather British. (JEREMY)

6 April - The Pale Blue Dot

We had a packed agenda for this meeting and plenty of excitement even before we started. We lost our Toastmaster - Chetan Bhatt - for the first 10 minutes but Joanna Ward stepped into his shoes with great aplomb and kept the meeting on track.

Robert Stuart led the Table Topics and asked members to comment on some difficult newspaper headlines. A tricky challenge but Tracy, Evelyne, Debbie, Stewart and Ron all acquitted themselves very well. The highlight of the Table Topics was when Robert issued his challenge and saw his victim's face drop so much that he relented and changed the newspaper headline.

We had 5 speeches because there is so much demand from members to make a speech - a great position for the Club to be in. Neil Chesters delivered his ice breaker and entertained us with a Scouser's view on finance - "robber" was of course one definition that Neil came up with. Neil's wit and storytelling skills came through very strongly in a very accomplished first speech. Neil won best speech and we look forward to many more.

Graham Parker then posed the question about the "pale blue dot" - a photograph of the Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990 from a distance of 3.7bn miles from the Earth. Graham's message, like Carl Sagan's, is that it can be a very humbling experience viewing the Earth from such a distance - and that as it is the only inhabitable planet that we know about perhaps we should spend more time respecting it.

Jane Penson then used the potholes outside her house and her council's leaflets to challenge the meaningless business babble - "issues", "resource", "Bottom line" that inflicts our lives. We all sympathised with Jane's assertion that it is the power of stories that really engage and keep people's attention.

Chris Liveing took us in another direction with a short history lesson on the 1st Earl of Beaconsfield - Benjamin Disraeli. He posed the question that Disraeli was a political adventurer - motivated by ambition and power rather than by principled belief. But perhaps Disraeli's most significant achievement is how this outsider rose to become leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister.

Finally Brian Sanders brought his memories flooding back to the war and plight of child evacuees. It was great to hear the real experiences of someone who had been through that period and his reflection on the attitudes and mores of the time.

Tracy Miranda, Debbie Hunter, Phil Renshaw, Ron Symington and Mike Kavanagh delivered the evaluations to the speeches - with Phil judged the best evaluator of the evening. Jacqui Hogan, as general evaluator, reminded us that evaluating in the 3rd person stops the evaluation being a conversation with the speech giver and engages the whole room. By this time we had overstayed our welcome and Tracy concluded the evening by reminding us that Chiltern Speakers was hosting the Area International Speech contest on Saturday 10th April.

16 March - International Speech and Evaluation contest

One of the highlights of the Chiltern Speakers calendar is the annual international speech and evaluation contest. This year's competition was well attended and hotly contested. The first part of the contest was the international speech competition - contestants had to deliver an original 5-7minute speech on a topic of their choice. We had four experienced speakers step up to the challenge. Helen Elliott spoke effectively about the importance of a CV for today's competitive job market. Jim Moffat regaled us with his tale of successfully winning a spot in the You-Tube assembled symphony orchestra which led him to playing at Carnegie Hall and with the London Symphony Orchestra. Jeremy had us convinced us that the moonwalk was an elaborate hoax filmed all filmed at Pinewood studios. Jacqui alarmed us with her enraged outbursts but won us over as she sought to seek self-control.

Dressed for the occasion, Chris Liveing was our Contest Chair, flanked by Chief Judge Eric Elliott. Chris conducted the evening with great aplomb and kept the audience entertained during the breaks. In particular, he had the audience work together to weave a story between a given opening of 'I woke up this morning…' and the ending that went '…and that's how I ended up in casualty'. The audience rose to the occasion and hilarity ensued as the story unfolded. Told from multiple viewpoints we had several bizarre twists and turns as toastmasters put their imagination to good use. It was so good we had a second go, this time with the ending '…and that's how I ended up in court."

The second part of the evening was the evaluation contest. First we had a test speech - this was delivered by Richard Day of Aylesbury Speakers, who spoke about waterproofing boots. Richard used a multitude of props - polish, boots, kitchen towels - to effectively illustrate his points and we all learned a thing or two. The evaluators then had some time to prepare before returning one-by-one to deliver their evaluations while the judges listened out and scored them for analytical points, style and conclusion. Jacqui Hogan, Helen Elliott, Joanna Ward and Pauline Trew each took it in turn to present their viewpoint of the speech in their own styles.

Finally it was time to hear the winners. It was a double win for Jacqui Hogan who took home the silverware for both her inspiring speech and inspired evaluation. Jim Moffat was runner up in the speech contest, while Helen Elliott was runner-up in the evaluation contest. All-in-all, a great evening of public speaking. (TRACY)

2 March - Two birds with one stone

Our first meeting of March had Hilary aptly taking the helm as Toastmaster. Bogusia was the TableTopics Master and picked idioms as our theme. Speaking off-the-cuff for two minutes, Brian got to 'pull someone's leg' and I tried to get through it 'without a hitch'. Jim recounted how his wife once 'got in his hair' while Chris mused on his experiences using 'carrot and stick' methods while dealing with his children. Jacqui took us back in time to the far east to portray the origins of 'kill two birds with one stone'. Her vivid description of the great shooter taking out two hummingbirds at once turned out to be a complete fabrication, but still won her best tabletopic of the evening.

We got to know two of our newer members a lot better as they delivered their icebreaker speeches. Chris proved appearances can be deceptive as she revealed that behind her ordinary exterior was a 'seething mass of creativity'! She went onto tell us about her passion for art. Entitled 'The Natural Thread' Sue's speech tied in her forefathers' farm in Cheshire with her buying a new camera. The link was Sue's love for the outdoors and nature which she conveyed as she talked about various parts of her life - the most entertaining of which were the well named lambs 'Mint sauce' and 'Lamb chop'.

Robert was in fine storytelling form as he animatedly related the tale of Fingal the giant and Finn McCool. Phil was awarded best speech of the night for his speech in which he challenged the audience to ask 'Why don't I have a coach ?'. In his speech Phil extolled the virtues of having someone to listen and ask us all the right questions.

There is more to the General Evaluator's role than just speaking. Graham discovered this as he took on the role for the first time and had a go at dealing with when things don't quite go to plan. He dealt with the mishaps with great humour and went onto share lots of useful feedback on the evening as a whole. Our grammarian Chetan told us about the myriad instances the word of the day - 'myriad' was used. Chetan also sparked debate as he questioned the use of 'unsolvable' versus 'insoluble'. The debate continued as we headed to the pub for some socializing as we too killed two birds with one stone. (TRACY)

16 February - Evaluation Workshop

This meeting was a special one - an evening dedicated to mastering the art of evaluation. A good evaluation inspires speakers to develop and helps improve their speaking ability. This workshop was developed as several members had expressed an interest in being able to improve their ability to give effective evaluations.

We had three groups of evaluators and three speakers. Each group was assigned one of the speeches to evaluate. With the help of our mentors each group member had to prepare and deliver a two minute evaluation of the speech

Debbie kicked things off with a very useful educational speech on 'How To Evaluate'. In it she shared the acronym P.I.E. which stands for Praise, Improve and Encourage and gave us useful outline for structuring our evaluations.

The first group was mentored by Helen. They listened to Jacqui Hogan deliver a speech based around her experiences in the social networking arena. And just for good measure, in between extolling the virtues of connecting online, Jacqui snuck in a politically charged rant. Ben, Brian and Jeremy who were evaluating Jacqui stepped up to the challenge. Each dealt with the issue in their own style, but tactfully and effectively. Ben also caught onto specific technical jargon used in the speech.

The second group, mentored by Debbie, got to listen to Louise Heather deliver her speech entitled 'Bumping Your Head'. This was a speech all about continuous improvement and how to apply different techniques to improving every aspect of our lives. You would never have guessed some members of this group were delivering evaluations for the first time as once again we had some very structured and effective evaluations. Graham even delivered his with no notes and neatly tied off his evaluation suggesting Louise use her own advice to continuously improve her speaking ability.

The third group was enthralled by Mike's storytelling. Mike wove a tale of a young guitarist finding the perfect guitar - this turned out to be a true tale in the life of classical guitarist Andres Segovia. Mentored by Jacqui, each member in this group took it in turns to give their verdict on the speech- with a lot of emphasis on the body language. It was interesting to hear the different interpretations based on individual's opinions each expressed well using the P.I.E. structure.

After each group member spoke, the evaluators were evaluated. Each group mentor stepped up and showed us how it was done as they delivered feedback praising the virtues and offering up suggestions for further improvement. All in all, it was a great evening of learning focused on improving our ability to give feedback. It was well timed with the evaluation competition just a month away there were many worthy competitors on the night. (TRACY)

15 December - Hats off to the festive season

In many ways this was one of the most enjoyable and humorous evening of the whole year. Only Stewart Linford in his inimitable style as toastmaster could have had us rolling in the aisles as he did with many a Ho Ho Ho and a couple of "without further ado" . The theme for the evening was obviously festive and everyone arrived with a Christmas hat or Father Christmas beard or flashing earrings etc.

Chris Liveing led the Table Topics and challenged everyone to take on the personality of a famous cartoon character. There was a lot of fun had - Mike Kavanagh was Woody from Toy Story, Helen Elliott was Cruella de Vil, Amarjit Kapur was Winnie the Pooh, Jacqui Hogan was Homer Simpson, Stuart Linford was Bugs Bunny and Colin Ward, our guest for the evening, was Tinkerbell! Everyone "got into character" and had a lot of fun with the challenge.

With everyone warmed up for the evening and in suitable festive spirit we had excellent speeches from Ron Leon, Jane Penson and Mike Kavanagh. Ron Leon posed the philosophical question that the purpose of life is to make the unconscious conscious. Jane Penson brought us back to the Christmas theme with her wonderfully evocative memories of her life captured in 5 Christmases. Mike Kavanagh continued the Christmas theme with an inventive update of the Christmas Carol story.

Helen Elliott and her evaluations team delivered a lovely positive critique to all three speakers and Louise Heather kept us on our grammatical toes with her Grammarian summary. A special mention must go to Jeremy Trew, Sergeant at Arms, for rustling up some delightful mince pies for the mid-session break. Finally, Toastmaster Stewart Linford brought a unique evening to a close and led us chortling and guffawing to the pub. (CHRIS)

1 December - A first hand account

It was the penultimate meeting of 2009 and was led by Toastmaster Phil Renshaw who introduced his underlying ‘hands’ theme, inspired by his efforts to break the habit of clasping his hands while speaking.

Helen had tabletopics well in hand as she invited contestants to present impromptu end of year awards. The audience was treated to a mini award ceremony as Louise presented ‘Best CEO’, Joanna did ‘Most Successful Salesperson of the Year’ and Brian had ‘Best Sportsperson of the Year’ to name just a few. The speakers all brought a lot of inventiveness to the topic which made it all highly enjoyable to listen to.

There were four varied speeches that evening. Stewart had the audience spell bound with vivid imagery as he told a dramatic tale of a strange disappearance in Tunisia. Chris was taking on the vocal variety challenge as he delivered a very touching speech about a young lad getting first hand account of his granddad’s experience in the war. I was doing my 10th speech entitled ‘Make Yourself Uncomfortable’ in which I encouraged the audience to step outside their comfort zone in order to achieve self fulfillment. Jeremy delivered an enchanting tale, indeed ‘A story without a book’ that kept us entranced to the end with his delightfully descriptive delivery.

The speeches were well evaluated by the team of Mike, Debbie, Eric and Hilary. General evaluator Jim took a different approach to the role and reminded us to avoid letting our feedback sandwiches get lopsided. Grammarian Graham gave some great tips such as eliminating the use of excessive use of the word ‘and’ by verbalizing it in your head. He also encouraged us to get uncomfortable and experiment on the stage – a seemingly awkward gap in his speech turned out to be a well-timed pause really illustrating his message.

Winners on the night were: Best TableTopics: Brian; Best Speech: Chris; Best Evaluator: Hilary;

The evening was a real winner, hands down! (TRACY)

17 November - What a fantastic evening!

Best table topics award went to Peter who chatted about being washed up on the shore of a desert island with Ken Dodd. Even better because Peter, a recent guest with us, didn't know who Ken Dodd was! Best Speaker went to one of our newest members Evelyn with her speech, Happily Ever After. Evelyn spoke about her Polish/French childhood, times spent on windswept dunes and her quest to achieve an MBA. How good it is to hear people come to the club with such focused goals and objectives.

Ron took up the gauntlet and repeated his Ice Breaker, Who Am I. Phil waxed lyrical about ethics in high finance and Bogusia launched a rugby ball on the opening of her speech, Parent Trap. Jane gave us her professional appraisal of the grammatical highs, a pleasure to hear her points of view.

Ben our Toastmaster for the evening held a tight ship, throughout the evening and we finished on time with a trip to the local pub. (JEREMY)

3 November - A typical evening

The evening began with the Seargeant at Arms, Jeremy opening the meeting on time at 19.45. He introduced Tracy, the Club President who announced that Chiltern Speakers Club was conferred for the year 2008~09 as "The President’s Distinguished Club" which is the highest Toastmasters award. She showed the ribbon which will adorn the yellow Toastmasters banner that is displayed at every meeting.

Tracy explained that each year Toastmasters International assesses the performance of each club using a points system. This is carefully designed to ensure that all members contribute - so for example we get points for the number of new members, points for the number of members who achieve goals such as Competent Communicator – so you can see that each individual club member’s contribution not only helps themselves but also helps the club. We are a very healthy club and intend to stay that way.

As Toastmaster Pauline opened the evening welcoming the guests and explaining the HATS protocol. Pauline had also stuck on the wall a number of reminders of each of the protocols which I am sure helped us all to remember to do the right thing at the right time.

Phil was introduced as the Grammarian and explained what he was going to look out for over the evening. As is tradition, he introduced a word as a test to see if speaker would be able to seamlessly introduce it into their speeches. The word he chose was "anachronism".

As General Evaluator Mike outlined the principles of evaluation and explained how key it was to the whole toastmaster’s philosophy.

Graham stood up as the Table Topics Master – his theme was great sporting achievements and invited each speaker to come up and explain how for their given sport a particular unusual pastime or hobby helped them achieve world renown. The impromptu speakers were:

Chris Liveing - as a world class cyclist had to explain why bell ringing was so crucial to him winning all those gold medals and yellow jerseys. Keith Clark – an international rugby player had no trouble in explaining his love of flower arranging. Recalling the day England beat the All Backs with him scoring the match winning try he still had time to arrange to flower bouquets for each table at the celebratory banquet. Jane Penson – had no difficulty in matching her skills as a marathon runner with her ability to play chess. Tracy Miranda - found inspiration in reading romantic novels to become one of the great downhill skiers of all time. Her speech incorporated the most outrageous use of the word (or part of the word) anachronism – having got ‘an knack’ to do this and ‘an knack’ to do that. Robert Stuart – was an ace sky diver and found humming to be his most powerful weapon. Interestingly, this was inspired by Winnie the Pooh as his floating balloon escapades which I believe involved a lot of humming.

After the table topics, the speeches were introduced beginning with Louise's Icebreaker 'Like Mother Like Daughter’. Louise delivered an impressive and moving opening speech explaining how her mother had inspired to work hard at school and be able to improve her opportunities. Opportunities her mother was unable to achieve. For an ice breaker this was a very good speech especially as Louise did not use any notes.

This was followed by Girish's second speech entitled ‘Holi’. He introduced us to an Indian religious festival called Holi which celebrates the richness and fertility of life. He explained that the main them is an explosion of intense colours. He then used the idea of intense colours exploding in the sky to introduce the natural explosion of colour that appears in the sky – the northern lights or aurora borealis. He explained the magical and mysterious electro-magnetic conditions that results in this sensational festival of lights. He left us with his personal desire to witness the northern lights some day in person.

The last speech of the evening was Joanna's fifth speech, ‘Every cloud has a silver lining’. Joanna immediately caught our attention by standing in the middle of the floor and pointing a police baton accusingly at the audience. She explained that this was a pozjalista (or please) stick used by the Russian police to control the public and particularly intimidate wealthy western visitors for spurious donations to their pension fund. Throughout Joanna’s time in Russia she was confronted with events that revolved around this stick. Eventually she managed to win one at a Dutch auction as a memento of her stay in Russia.

After the break, Debbie gave an Education Slot on How to begin and how to end speeches. There were lots of useful tips. She quoted the three C’s which were confident, capture and construction. Debbie also suggested that speakers should memorise their opening lines. It was suggested that it was not advisable to memorise verbatim the main bulk of your speech as you are prone forgetting it – so just think of the main points. Plus:

• Don’t make a joke as this can be high risk if it falls flat
• No apologies or explanations just go straight into the speech
• At the amber light begin to summarise your message
• Then give them a good solid ending to draw out the applause
• As with the opening the ending should be practiced

As the evening drew to a close, Mike, as the General Evaluator introduced each individual evaluator to talk about each speech in turn. Tracy evaluated Louise's speech, Jeremy evaluated Girish's speech and Chris evaluated Joanna's speech.

Phil Renshaw then came up to put his grammarian gloss on events highlighting both constructively and encouragingly what could be improved upon.

Mike then evaluated the overall evening and the evening closed with Tracy, the President presenting the ribbons and formally closing the meeting. The ribbons went to Tracy for the best table topic Speech , Chris for the best evaluation and to Joanna for the best speech. (JOANNA)

20 October - The sweet smell of success

The evening's meeting covered everything from cheese to Socrates, from Canadian canoes to historic wood and from the business alphabet to the sweet smell of success. Jim Moffat was our Toastmaster and he introduced Sue Andrew as the grammarian. Sue didn't have a word of the day because she tried to encourage us all to speak in good plain English and abandon all that horrendous jargon such 'blue sky thinking' and 'helicopter views'. So, 'without further ado' (also banned and that particular phrase resulted in a hand to the forehead) the evening continued with the Table Topics. These were ably hosted by Ben Bergonzi who used the theme of song titles. Jeremy Trew managed to take us from 'on days like these' to a story about his great grandfather. Louise Heather (a very brave first time table topic speaker) with all the time in the world, lead us down river paddling slowly enough to take in the beauty of blue skies and kingfishers. On the other hand, Brian Sanders donned his 'dirty overalls' and was busy propagating his greenhouse whilst listening to shed [garage] music! Pauline Trew took us 'beyond the sea' on a trip in her Canadian canoe with lashing waves and high cliffs whilst Sue Andrews walked us through the avenues and alley ways of Beaconsfield during her lunch hour. Bringing up the rear was Mike Kavanagh who spoke about the film 'Midnight Cowboy' as his song title was 'everybody's talking at me'.

We then went straight into the speeches with Ron Leon heading up the speech programme. He did his icebreaker entitled 'Who am I' and quoted Socrates by telling us that 'an unexamined life is a life not worth living'. Bogusia Lukjaniec did her fifth speech - 'your body speaks'. She called it 'Crying for help' and entertained us by trying to unravel the 'Army alphabet' of ISPs, FYIs, DTAs, and PCBs which are now part of every day life in the 21st century. Stuart Linford began by asking us what was the significance of the 21st October. We soon learnt it was Trafalgar Day and the year it happened was 1647. Armed with that knowledge, we were told about how during a refit of HMS Victory in 1922, much of the wood had been saved from burning and that in his business they were using just about every last splinter to produce uniquely hand crafted furniture. The last speaker of the evening was Mike Kavanagh with his speech entitled 'the sweet smell of success' which was delivered against the objectives of creating an original story based on a personal experience. This he did by telling us about how he stepped up to the mark and became the manager of a local U12s football team.

Once the speeches were finished, Robert Stuart gave a general evaluation of the evening and voiced some constructive improvements. He finished by introducing his evaluating team who were Phil Renshaw, Dennie Hunter, Brian Sanders and Joanna Ward. Each evaluator delivered their personal opinion to each speaker to provide both encouragement and suggestions for improvement in the future. Chiltern Speakers then headed for a de-brief in the Greyhound! (TRACY)

6 October - An Inspirational Evening

It was an inspired evening at Chiltern Speakers on the 6th of October. Starting off with tabletopics, Robert Stuart challenged us to put ourselves in the shoes of great explorers like Scott and talk about how we would deal with different situations on our expeditions. It was a very original topic that brought out many interesting stories, including hearing about how to keep entertained and how to deal with trip stow-aways. Perhaps unsurprisingly, current club and Area 21 champion Jim Moffat was awarded best tabletopics for his tale of how to enjoy Antarctic exploration.

Our organized toastmaster Hilary Symington led us through the programme, ably assisted by Pauline Trew as the general evaluator. We had three speeches on the night. The first was delivered by Jim, who volunteered to do a speech at the last minute. Fittingly his speech, which talked about defining success, featured the quote from Woody Allen ‘80% of success is just showing up’. Definitely an inspired message to heed! Amarjit Kapur delivered a speech in which he talked about focus and how it tied in with our goals, passions and values. Also very inspirational words. The final speech of the evening was delivered by Chris Liveing who climbed, crept and leapt about the stage in this speech ‘The Guy in the Corner’. It was about Chris as a boy who, alongside his two brothers, make a startling discovery when they creep into the neighbours house. Fortunately all ends well as the body they see is nothing more than a Guy Fawkes left behind for them! Chris exaggerated gestures kept the audience entranced and deservedly won him best speaker on the night.

Our evaluators gave their feedback on the speeches while Pauline summed up the evening, reminding us why it is good to speak within the time limits. Graham Parker, taking on the grammarian for the first time, gave a different point of view to the evening, focusing on the positives from the speeches. He highlighted good use of language including the assonance in a line from Amarjit’s speech – ‘no hocus pocus about focus’! (TRACY)

15 September - Love your knees!

The Humorous Speech and Table Topics Contest was a roaring success. A huge thank you to everyone who participated in making it such an entertaining evening and in particular to Helen and her judging team of timers, judges and counters. Also, a thank you to Robert for stepping in as the official photographer and to Jeremy for ably looking after the Table Topics Contestants.

Congratulations to Jacqui who took to the floor dressed to kill in her electric blue cross country skiing outfit. She won first prize for her speech 'Love your knees' telling us about how she learnt to ski in a car park, went on to ease her knee pain with the help of some (?) vin rouge, threw caution to the wind and hurtled down the mountain. Here's to palm trees and coconuts on her next holiday!

There was tough competition from the verbal prosecutioner, Mike with his speech 'The things people say'. He told us about verbal buffers and pugilistic arts used by politicians to evade difficult questions. Tracy enlightened us with the antics she has used 'In search of a smile' from her new baby. Was it a windy pop or was it a smile? Phil told us 'What makes me (him) cross' which is cross selling and gave us a short cut round the customer service system and by the way, a word of warning...don't offer him extra fries. Jeremy has been looking after 'Overseas Visitors' and hosted the completely non-English speaking Mr and Mrs Momotani during an origami conference. Finally, we went on a 'Road trip' with Graham starting in the Big Apple and finishing in Denver with the highlight being a very hot jalepeno pepper eating contest. Somehow his travelling companion arrived back with $200 in his pocket and Graham didn't!

Jim went onto win the Table Topics Contests after regaling us with 'What to wear on a first date', clearly different height platform shoes work! His fellow competitors were Ben , Debbie , Graham , Chris and Tracy . Overall it was a very good fun evening with lots of participation from everyone, all part of being a Toastmaster. (JOANNA)

1 September - Do Clouds Glide?

There was a good turnout as Chiltern Speakers got September off to a good start. I kicked things off by announcing the club plans to look into finding a bigger hall for Chiltern Speakers. I have already had many suggestions which I will investigate over the coming weeks and keep you all posted. Andrew took on the role of grammarian and set us the word of the day - ‘disinter’. As ever, members took up the challenge and came up with many creative uses (and maybe one or two misuses) of the word.

I had the pleasure of setting the tabletopics for the evening and subjected the victims, I mean members, to some gadgets I had resurrected from my kitchen. Highlights included Jacqui’s likening a coconut grater to a tool for removing stones from horses’ shoes and Jim conjuring up images of chickens doing lacework after he was asked to speak about a poultry lacer. However Sue walked away the winner on the night as she dismissed a spaghetti measurer in favour of good old fashioned weighing.

We had three speeches during the evening. Robert had us sky high as he gave a great descriptive speech of his experience gliding (beautifully titled ‘Do Clouds Glide) – he certainly had us up in the clouds with him. Phil delivered his speech ‘The Dangers of Living with Generation Y’ – in which he shed light on who that generation consisted of and an insightful look at how they are often stereotyped. However, he was sure to remind us to always treat everyone as the individuals they are. ‘Fear’ was the title of Graham’s icebreaker. He used that theme to nicely wrap up his personal story with some great highlights including how he first met his wife. The humorous and romantic aspects of his speech won him the best speaker award for the evening. Debbie took away best evaluator for her evaluation of Robert’s speech.

Eric delivered an education slot on evaluation, a much called for topic. He used the word ‘EVALUATION’ as an acronym to highlight the key aspects of carrying out a good evaluation. He gave some great examples of how we can encourage self-improvement in our evaluations. So following on from this I encourage you all, especially those who have never done it before, to take on the role of evaluator at the next possible opportunity! (TRACY)

18th August 2009 - What's in a name?

What's in a name? Some of us now know thanks to Debbie guiding us through the evening using the theme 'meanings of names'. She lived up to the meaning of hers and was both busy & industrious in her role as Toastmaster. Jeremy (athletic and well mannered) hosted a 'Mini Apprentice' during Table Topics and chose five candidates Tracy, Debbie, Graham, Andrew and Lee. They each spoke convincingly on their topics ranging from 'why didn't you speak up when your project was failing' to 'how come you have a complete lack of financial aptitude'. Each defended their position well and they were all hired!

Phil (Friend of horses) and Grammarian for the evening, asked us to weave 'nascent' into our speeches and evaluations. Quite brilliantly, Amarjit (Conqueror of Gods), used 'nascent' in the opening line of his icebreaker speech the 'Making of an Entrepreneur'. He gave us a great insight into his life, being brought up in Afghanistan, moving to the UK to study when he was 18 and then starting his own business.

Chris (Carrier of Christ) entertained us with his 4th speech entitled 'Sat Nav' and regaled us with a rather interesting journey to a wedding. Suffice it to say, that 'she' (the sat nav) started off as a very amicable and guiding voice and ended up as being the infamous Cruella de Ville!

Our final speaker Brian (strong and noble) handed out hankies in anticipation of his speech 'An Evacuee'. He gave us an evocative and personal account about being evacuated from London aged 7 with nothing but a Paddington bear style label on his lapel, a gas mask, the smallest suitcase known to man and a stamped addressed envelope to tell his parents where he was when he got there. It was fascinating.

We were visited by our Area Governor or 'man from the forest' otherwise known as Keith. He told us about his role as well as acting as the General Evaluator. His Evaluation team were Joanna (traditional and family oriented woman), Pauline (strong willed and cute) and Tracy (brave and daring).

We had one guest, Louise and a new member, Graham . Here's to our next meeting on Tuesday 1st September. (JOANNA)

4th August 2009 - A Win/Win Evening

It was another busy evening for Chiltern Speakers as members and no less than five guests packed the room. Our toastmaster for the evening was a very smiley Ron Symington. Phil was taking on the tabletopics master role for the first time and brought us a very original concept – speakers were each asked to give the final thank-you for the night at their organization’s 10th anniversary dinner, after the keynote speech. This resulted in a lot of hilarity – for example Mike speaking on behalf of ‘The Cloud Appreciation Society’ following on from the keynote speech on scaling Mt. Everest. Debbie was the winner on the evening, I’m sure in part to her witty lines as she spoke on behalf of the ‘Society for the Prevention of Accidents’ and consoled the keynote speaker on his misfortunes in baking.

The evening’s speeches taught us a lot. Andrew delivered his second speech, giving us an overview of the three principles of handling people as featured in the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People”. Remember always give honest and sincere complements! Bogusia brought the subject of languages to the forefront, challenging us improve our skills and brain power by learning new languages. She started us off by getting us to say ‘Thank-you’ in many languages. Joining us from the Aylesbury club, visiting Toastmaster Richard Day delivered speech 5 entitled ‘1492’. Keeping a very straight face throughout, he set about convincing us that the world is indeed flat and we have been misled all these years!

We had a unique advanced speech on the evening – Helen, delivering from the interpersonal communication manual, tackled the tricky task of being ‘The Successful Negotiator’ In a speech made up of parts, Helen first gave us an overview of how she was hoping to employ win/win negotiating tactics to achiever her goal. Then we had a role play featuring Debbie as Helen’s teenage daughter Amy. It was great to witness as teenage Amy did her best to escape her mother’s tactics – but Helen was not to be outwitted. The final part involved audience interaction – feedback was mostly positive that a win/win had been achieved, and the general consensus that Helen is a most patient mother.

Also on the evening grammarian Jacqui highlighted our ‘um, ers’ and other verbal crutches. Eric was our general evaluator and summed up the evening. Pauline Trew won the ‘Best Evaluator’ award on the night. At the end of the evening, many of us went on to the Greyhound Pub, but everyone went home a winner. (TRACY)

21st July 2009 - Fanfare for the Toastmaster

The theme for this evening echoed fun and participation.

Nicola stepped bravely out as Toastmaster for the first time. She nimbly introduced all the speakers, discreetly labeling them by the colour of their cars.

Hilary gave 'Holidays from Hell' as table topics. It seems she had experienced all bar one of these terrible events.

This evening we were treated to an Ice Breaker. If ever there was a reason to join Toastmaster it's because of a looming job interview. We wish Paul well and congratulate in on his first speech.

A hornets' nest of Horns, Trumpets, and Cornets was the theme of the next speech. Thank you to Jim for a fabulous rendition of the hosepipe orchestra with 6 wiling volunteers for his Demonstration Speech. So you can bring props with you to Chiltern Speakers. Brian took us on a moral maze when he talked about the job that needed doing and an inability to approach a kindly neighbor about a wheel barrow issue! The audience was teased to find other morals twisted within the talk but 'think before you speak' seems appropriate.

Again we were teased by a Hot Topic. Chris had just the length of the meeting to arrange his speech about a lost knapsack. Running up and down escalators and taking monorails to nowhere.

Primed up and ready to go was the fanfare of our General evaluator, Sue, while Grammarian Pauline was on the hunt for sentences with no end.

The evening ended with an Education spot from Mike all about the role of Mentoring, an easy way to get help from more experienced members in the group. A guest for the evening neatly closed with the following; 'Better to travel hopefully than to arrive'. (JEREMY)

7th July 2009 - A summer evening with Chiltern Speakers

The damp weather was no competition to the evening. Our new president, Tracey, introduced her new team outlining her vision. Joanna followed by giving us an insight into her role as VP education officer, an exciting time with the emphasis on member involvement within all the roles in the club.

Congratulations go to Graham, a new visitor, who was awarded the best table topics for his rendition of the traditional Fish & Chips. Thanks to Pauline for giving us the challenging topics based on the theme, what if? Andrew and Phil both gave us very well crafted ice breakers. Andrew told us how he has noticed how his two young children learn to communicate and how that’s given him the incentive to learn more about speaking in public. Phil wouldn’t let go of his Yorkshire past relating that to how he wants to develop his speaking skills.

Swine flu reared its ugly snout in Joanna’s 4th speech. Joanna managed to tackle her fear of needing notes by firmly leaving them on her seat as she took the floor. She was rewarded for her efforts with the best speaker ribbon.

New to us was Hot Topics. This is where a member is given a subject to speak on at the start of the evening and has to deliver the speech at the close of the meeting. Tracy took us from Giraffes in Kenya to the Dolphin, a graceful, intelligent and social creature.

Our general evaluator, Chetan, rounded up the evening while Stuart gave us a gently stinging report on Ums, and other such nasty stuff.

To top off the meeting our new President presented Jacqui with the Distinguished Toastmaster award. Distinguished Toastmaster (DTM) is awarded to members who have achieved both the Advanced Communication Gold and Advanced Leader Silver awards and is Toastmasters' highest award. So well done Jacqui. (JEREMY)

16th June 2009 - Truth and Lies

Hosted by Robert - the Toastmaster for the evening.

AGM - We opened up with the AGM and voted in the new Chiltern Speakers Committee for the coming the year from 1st July 2009 to 30th June 2010 and they are:

President - Tracy Miranda
VP Education - Joanna Ward
VP Membership - Mike Kavanagh
VP Public Relations - Chris Liveing
Secretary - Bogusia Lukjaniec
Treasurer - Robert Stuart
Sargeant at Arms - Jeremy Trew

Treasurer’s Report - Robert, the Committee Treasurer, presented the accounts for the year. The main points being that due to a drop in membership we had a shortfall of £213 in the year and what this means is that our surplus has been reduced from £825 to £611. The basic message is that we all need to actively recruit new members to avoid taking other measures to keep our account in the black. So let your friends and colleagues at work know how enjoyable and useful an evening at Chiltern Speakers is.

President’s End of Year Speech – Jacqui, the outgoing President, summed up a very successful year for the Club. Having achieved a number of significant milestones the club was awarded “The President’s Distinguished Club Award”. This is a good reflection on the overall health of the club; to give you an idea Chiltern has not received this award since 2002. Although Jacqui played it down, her personal achievement of reaching High Performance Leader made a significant contribution to the club achieving this distinguished award. She thanked the committee for their support over the year and reflected on their excellent teamwork.

Tall Tales Competition (otherwise known as the 'liers' contest!) - We had great four speeches:

Stewart – Related his experiences at an NEC Exhibition with a strange Swedish encounter in the car park. Eric – dipped into the history of Merseyland and the trail and tribulations of finding a suitable Princess. Chetan – took us over the valley to a village in the Chiltern Hills where he had a strange but not unpleasant encounter with some Vestal Mechanics. Nicola – told a very fishy story about strange happens off the Cornish Coast where the sea was bubbling and the fish were biting but were never caught.

Well done Stewart for winning and best of luck in the regional competition on Friday evening at Marlow Orators.

After the interval, Jeremy set up some interesting Tabletopic challenges. The subject was talking food and what they would say on the supermarket shelves if they wanted you to buy them. Standing up with a conspicuously large courgette in his hand, Phil managed to convince us that his selling techniques would be the best.

Helen did an excellent evaluation of Jacqui’s speech where she complimented Jacqui on the art of delegation. After, Mike as General Evaluator did an evaluation of the evening and Debbie as Grammarian gave a review of the interesting phrases used during the evening.

Take care, speak out. (MIKE)

2nd June 2009 - ...Parliament pervades all!

Chris opened the evening with impromptu table topics based around the recent financial shenanigans. Mike spoke about the dreadful smell from his moat, and Eric justified his second, or was it, third home allowance. Paulines seventh speech took us back to a 12 year old boy spraying tags on the New York Subway. Graffiti Art or Vandalism. Graffiti is something we all take for granted but you could see how inspired Pauline was by her vibrant talk.

Congratulations to Girish for his Ice Breaker. Never give up. What an honour to listen to some ones personal story. This was a very moving speech giving us insight into a background of discrimination, self doubt, fear and insecurity. Thank you Girish we look forward to hearing many more.

Do I look like I have time for Social Media. Joanna was a positive beacon for this new phenomenon. A well researched speech giving us all food for thought about the new world of communication. And, as she said, you can do it in your pajamas!

As usual it's easy to notice the benefits of toastmasters when speakers are evaluated, helpful and constructive evaluations being the food of growth. I overheard one of the speakers saying 'right, next time I'm not going to'. So there you have it, the learning experience goes on.

Other points from the evening: Eric counted upwards of 25 Ums! He was inspired by the concept of the terminally unenlightened when it comes to social networking. We give a warm welcome to Julie our visitor fresh from Australia. Jim brought a couple of new ideas to the committee for consideration. Google groups and google docs.

The evening was closed by Mike who thanked those who stood in at zero notice for unfilled roles. (JEREMY)

19th May 2009 - Parliamentary scandal...

Another great evening opened by Jim asking a few members to give short off the cuff speeches loosely based on the present Parliamentary scandal. Congratulations to new members Phil and Girish who took up the challenge so well.

Interestingly the four speeches followed very personal lines. Debbie's reached deep into our souls talking about the plight of elderly people often faced with no one real to chat with. Jeremy gave us his Five Minute Rulean easy way to save the world. Nicola followed up with a heart rending and inspirational talk about a prolonged series of visits to Hospitals with her Son and her admiration of the NHS. Both Nicola and Jeremy have now completed their 10th speech. The speech by Brian gave us an out of body experience when he recounted tales of an Australian adventure complete with Crocodiles and body parts!

Best speaker prize went to Debbie. Most improved to Nicola. Best evaluator Hilary.

Mike stepped in as president and closed the evening after which many of us retired to The Greyhound Public house. Why not join us next time. (JEREMY)

5th May 2009 - Tales of the Shires

A very enjoyable time was had by all at the last Chiltern Speakers evening, ably led by the Toastmaster for the evening, Joanna . This was Joanna's debut as Toastmaster and she past with flying colours.

Sue asked for tales of the Shires as the subject for Table Topics. Jeremy told us of girlfriends past who hailed from Herefordshire; Robert farmed out information on Pembrokeshire; Krishna interpreted the language of Essex; Chetan proved his expertise on matters historial in Lancashire; and Jim's description of sea creatures and musical connections in Norfolk won him the Best Table Topic award.

'Acute' was the word for the evening requested by Grammarian, Chris, and Stewart brought a whole new meaning to the role of General Evaluator.

Pauline's speech, 'Sailing Ahead', showed that time spent in a canoe is not plain sailing. Brian gave us an insight into the history and folklore connected to 'The Wedding Cake'. And Jacqui has now reached a milestone in her Toastmaster career and gave her 40th (yes 40th!) speech entitled 'A Funny Thing Happened on the way to the Podium', where she described all the experiences and speeches leading to her attainment of Advanced Communicator Gold - Congratulations and Well Done Jacqui! She certainly deserved being voted as Best Speaker for the evening, and Ben, her evaluator, justly received Best Evaluator.

Congratulations also to Stewart on attaining Advanced Communicator Bronze. (DEBBIE)

21st April 2009 - The Hostile Audience

Normally the toastmasters audience is supportive and encouraging – but this was not the case at the last meeting. Instead members of the audience were very confrontational and asked lots of provoking questions. Before I scare you off the next meeting – let me explain – it was all because we were asked to be! In a unique speech from the ‘Speeches by Management’ manual, Stewart delivered his speech on ‘Confrontation: The Adversary Relationship’ for which he required a hostile audience to deal with while debating the issue of cheap and poorly crafted furniture versus more expensive but good quality furniture.. Members of Chiltern Speakers don’t do things by half and certainly let Stewart have it with a series of tough questions (take for instance, Chris’ suggestion that he find a different spokesman for his company!!). Stewart did a remarkable job, fielding all the questions gracefully and never once losing his cool.

In another packed evening, Chris entertained us with his speech describing how the simple task of adding his new bicycle to his existing home insurance went all wrong leading to him being quizzed about species of trees and finally having to come up with a creating solution to the problem! Bogusia had us exclaiming ‘Hallelujah’ as she presented us with her speech exploring the general meaning of the word as well as specifically how it and the song by the same name had recently inspired us.

Working backwards, the tabletopics was also an inspired session with Debbie making us state our case to be hired for the weirdest jobs! Toastmasters had to interview for such strange things as Brian to be a Cornish-pasty crimper and Robert a Simon Cowell replacement! Our guests put in a strong showing too which was great to see. Honours were shared for the best tabletopics contestant between myself and Ron. I got half the vote no doubt for my talented ‘cheese-spraying’ finger while Ron, interviewing to be a ballet dancer, displayed some inspired dance moves – you had to be there to see his ‘dollar dollar dollar’ one!! Great stuff.

Running the meeting we had our Ringmaster Helen and general evaluator Hilary leading the way. The evening also featured Nicola as grammarian with some fascinating facts about vocabulary, especially number of words spoken by men versus women – may be worth getting Nicola to put the details down on the club blog for all to enjoy. Jacqui also gave an Education spot talking about the great opportunities both speech wise and leadership wise available to Toastmasters once they have completed the 10-speeches of the CC manual.

All in all a great, quite unique meeting. (TRACY)

7th April 2009 - Persuade with Power

There was a packed schedule to get through as Jacqui took the helm as Toastmaster at the meeting on the 7th of April. Blanche gave us a sweet start as she introduced her chocolate-themed table topics – yumyum!! Highlights included Eric describing a cruise with a chocolate day that did not go too well and Debbie adamantly stating how they should be no tax on chocolate. Ben’s entertaining recount of a chocolate fountain going horribly wrong won him Best TableTopics Speaker for the evening.

There were five speeches that evening, and strangely enough three of them were speech number 9 from the Competent Communicator manual - “Persuade With Power”. This meant we had our speakers doing their best to convince, inspire and call the audience to action. So we had Jeremy persuading us to make our own compost, Nicola calling for better tourist facilities in the UK and myself invoking all to donate to charity CARE.

Pauline as Grammarian gave us ‘perseverance’ as word of the day and also highlighted the best bits from the evening. Robert was General Evaluator and applauded the great evaluations from our evaluators Eric, Debbie, David and Helen. Helen was wonderful enough to do two evaluations on the evening and so it was fitting that she walked away with ‘Best Evaluator’ for the night. Also, as everyone agreed, we had a great new layout for all to get at the teas and coffees (and bonus basket of chocolates from Blanche) – lets keep it that way for future meetings.

In addition there were two advanced speeches. Stewart delivered a speech from ‘Speeches by Management’ – the status report. In true Stewart style he kept it lively and entertaining, both by engaging the audience and by using wonderful props to keep us interested. Ben delivered a humorous speech titled ‘How to Name Your Child’ – although I won’t be using any of Ben’s suggested names, the speech had the audience in fits of laughter. Ben did the double winning ‘Best Speaker’ for the evening – and this fittingly coincided with his great achievement of having completed all speeches for his Advanced Toastmaster Bronze award – congratulations!! (TRACY)

17th March 2009 - International Speech and Evaluation contest

The bar was raised as the last meeting was the ‘International Speech and Evaluation Contest’ for Chiltern Speakers. The speeches and evaluations were competitive so all our contestants challenged themselves to speak under pressure, while the audience benefited from learning from them. I was chairing the competition with Sue as Chief Judge, overseeing the judging side of the meeting.

For the speech contest we had speeches from Nicola , Jacqui and Keith . Nicola delivered her 8th speech in which she presented us a useful way of using a mind map to develop a speech, and used a chart to show us exactly how she had done so for preparing for this speech. A very useful technique indeed. Keith from the Marlow club bravely stepped in at the last minute to replace one of our speakers. Keith gave an excellent speech about his experiences in public speaking, especially encouraging all Toastmasters to get as much stage time as they can in their quests to be better speakers. Finally, Jacqui delivered her very personal speech “17.9” which dealt with her experience finding out she had diabetes and her resolve to change her life. Jacqui’s powerful speech won her first place in the contest and the opportunity to represent Chiltern at the Area Contest.

Then came the evaluation contest. Toastmaster Chris Liveing delivered the test speech for the evaluation contestants. In his speech, Chris broached the question -‘Is There A Perfect Family Holiday?’ and followed on by telling us of very humorous and memorable events from his family holidays. Our contestants, Brian, Debbie, Chetan and Mike, then one-by-one delivered their evaluation of Chris’s speech. Judges scored the evaluations based on analysis, recommendations, technique and summation. Debbie was pronounced the winner with Brian coming in second place.

Congratulations to all who took part in the competition – a great way to develop and hone those speaking skills! (TRACY)

17th February 2009 - 'The best of times, the worst of times'

Despite the slow start we eventually ended up with a good turnout for the evening which included two guests: Joy and Girish.

Table Topics - Eric was Tabletopics Master who used the idea of the current economic doom and gloom to define his theme. Quoting from Dickens: “it was the best of times it was the worst of times” he invited each speaker to come up and speak about a particular personnel good or bad experience. Our guest Joy won it with her dubious greatest sporting achievement. Sue cleverly managed to turn around the subject the best advice she ever received to the best advice she never received. Thus showing the skill in tabletopics is not answering the question but avoiding doing so in a clever way.

Speeches – Tonight we had a good cross section of speeches: An Ice Breaker - Our new member Chris did a very clever ice breaker. He caught our attention straight away by confessing to being a masochist – we were all worried at this point that he may have joined the wrong club! However, it became apparent that his real passion was cycling and in order to do an annual trip in France he was compelled to do a grind of training in his garage at 0630 every morning. Chris delivered the speech well and without notes leaving us anticipating some excellent follow-up speeches in the near future.

Speech 8 - Jeremy choose a Russian fairy story as his subject. Using a prepared flip chart he took us through the storey with clever drawings, voices and actions.

Storytelling Speech 1 - A Fairy Tale – it was pure coincidence this. But Mike choose an to deliver an adaptation of ‘The Selfish Giant’ by Oscar Wilde. He asked everyone to sit in a semicircle and then he sat in the middle. The idea being to ensure everyone was engaged in the story.

Evaluations – Helen , Ron and Sue provided good and useful evaluations to all the speakers. Robert as Grammarian picked up interesting phrases and also pointed out the misuse of ‘like’ which was very helpful.

As General Evaluator the overall evening was evaluated by Krishna ; and we also received positive feedback from our two guests. Brian made some interesting points about speaker introductions and also suggested some different speaking ideas which are food for thought. (MIKE)

3rd February 2009 - Perfectly formed!

A small but perfectly formed group braved the cold weather on Tuesday to enjoy a heart-warming Toastmasters meeting. Table Topics Master Jim based his Table Topics on musical situations with harmonious results. Brian told us how he would like to master the keyboard; Paul’s Desert Island disc would be ‘American Pie’; Hilary had us enthralled with her emotive description of the Pathetique Symphony; Ron would use his dancing experience to teach youngsters the joy of music; Ben humorously described his dilemma if ever asked to teach a musical instrument; and Chris, one of our guests for the evening, entertained us all with the method he would use if asked to perform classical music in front of unruly youngsters. Chris won ‘Best Table Topic’ for the evening.

The speeches, as always, were of a very high standard. Nicola gave us some memory tips which were so effective that I can now relate all the planets in the solar system. Pauline’s speech was a lovely ‘Hodge Podge’ description of her life and Brian took us with him on an entertaining tour of Australia.

Blanche as Grammarian picked up on some memorable phrases of the evening and Mike, as General Evaluator, summed up the meeting and also reminded everyone of the Contest on 17 March. (DEBBIE)

20th January 2009 - Moments of Truth

Last week’s meeting was one of the busiest in recent weeks with several members and guests in attendance – was great to have members who had not been in a while show up and add to the atmosphere. Jacqui was Toastmaster, and inspired by Barack Obama’s inauguration had a theme of ‘change’, introducing the speakers by telling us about major positive changes in their lives. Nicola was our Grammarian, giving us ‘immortal’ as our word of the day – several toastmasters obliged by skillfully working it into their speeches.

Bogusia was our Tabletopics master and challenged the speakers to envision themselves taking on a new profession in teaching and talk about how they could inspire the pupils in their chosen subject. David spoke about teaching Danish, Eric paid tribute to his old sport teacher and mentor while Robert showed us a new use for our slips as a way to demonstrate principles of air motion. Debbie won best tabletopics speaker for talking about how she would look to our leaders like Churchill and Disraeli to inspire her class.

Onto the speeches and first up was Krisha who likened the economic crisis to a virus as the credit crunch continues to spread. We were also treated to not one but two humorous speeches. First up was Ben with a brave speech titled ‘The Invisibility of Butter’ which entertainingly poked fun at differences between men and women. Then we had Stewart talk about his involvement with Burns Night this year. Stewart won best speaker title for his antics with the kilt as well as the beautiful poetry recital included in the speech.

We also had our Area Governor, Trish, in attendance at the meeting. Trish delivered part two of the education spot ‘Moments of Truth’. In it Trish presented very useful feedback related to Chiltern Speakers moments of truth – many of which I’m sure we will be following up on in upcoming meetings.

Finishing things off, Hilary told us about an upcoming reality television series which involves teenagers and public speaking. Hilary and Ron got to see the final but weren’t giving anything away, but we look forward to seeing it for ourselves on screen from late February. (TRACY)

6th January 2009 - a Benevolent start to the year

Despite the freezing temperatures, the first meeting of the year was held in fine style led by Toastmaster Eric . It was a ‘benevolent’ start to the year – not least as that was our word of the day from grammarian Jim.

Helen conducted a very topical tabletopics session, getting Toastmasters to make comments or suggestions related to the economic slowdown. As a result we had Esther suggesting we could give spam another try – hot or cold, battered with beans and mash! Stewart reminded us that whatever else we can do without, we can’t live without humour, while Pauline and Jeremy gave money saving tips like making crab apple jam. Jim showed no remorse or benevolence for the Woolworths shutdown as he powerfully declared ‘Let them be damned!’ Despite a decent show of hands from Toastmasters who felt sorry to see Woolworths go, overall we must have agreed with Jim as he walked away with best Tabletopics speaker for the evening.

We had three enjoyable speeches at the meeting, the first from Bogusia, with the witty title ‘From Pole to Pole’. Her very informative speech told us about three very famous and distinguished Poles – Copernicus, Chopin and Maria Sklowdowska aka Marie Curie. Three household names, yet it was certainly eye-opening to me to learn they were all Polish. The second speech was delivered by Robert who confidently interacted with the audience and made good use of the Toastmaster banner to talk about the effectiveness of colour combinations. Jacqui delivered the final speech of the evening – a hilarious recount of her personal shopping experience. Jacqui's speech won her best speaker for the evening. (TRACY)

2nd December 2008 - Hats off to Christmas

We had a great last meeting of 2008 – well attended with everyone putting a lot of effort behind the hat and Christmas food theme. Heads were adorned with many different types of hats – even prompting Mike to remark that it looked like a reunion of the Village People. The special best hat of the evening award went to Hilary for her great hat which reminded me of the Harry Potter talking hat, but with tinsel!

The meeting was well led by the Trews – Jeremy as Toastmaster and Pauline as general evaluator. To borrow Pauline’s analogy, the evening unfolded like a Christmas gift being unwrapped.

Kicking things off Hilary challenged us with a variety of excellent topics based around the food theme. I was pleased to win best tabletopics for the evening with my advice on how to get out of any work preparing a Christmas dinner but still enjoy one.

We also had toastmasters give us tips on dealing with the washing up, ideas for losing weight and lots of references to Granny and the sherry!

The evening featured two speeches. First up was Esther with her Icebreaker. Confident and ever-smiling she walked us through the highlights of her music collection with lots of anecdotes along the way. We also had an advanced speech from Ben, who gave us a run-through of his jobs and career to date, including his latest venture – good luck with it Ben!

Finishing off the meeting we had grammarian Ron who treated us to a quiz which was great fun as we tried to recall who had said what over the course of the meeting.

Following the meeting we all enjoyed drinks and plenty of socializing at the Greyhound. All in all, it was a fabulous meeting to end 2008 with! (TRACY)

17th November 2008 - Strictly come Speaking

Martin Sadler had us all swaying in our seats as he talked about the history of salsa dancing. He won best speaker for the night as he also showed us his best steamy salsa moves. Helen Elliott echoed how we all felt about Martin's speech as she won best evaluator for the evening.

We discovered most Toastmasters haven't even started their Christmas shopping - which perhaps was just as well as Blanche knowledgeably outlined our consumer rights in her second speech. Chetan gave an education spot highlighting the importance of a speech's opening while I delivered my 7th speech talking about how GPS technology works.

The evening featured quite a few firsts - Nicola confidently delivered her first evaluation and Bogusia kept us all in step in her first role as timer. Also Pauline had us telling stories in TableTopics - we had all sorts: cranky cars, magic beans, hungry caterpillars!! However it was Eric's tale of the enchanted teapot that spared the Queen's blushes that won him best TableTopics speaker for the evening.

Thanks to Sue for helping out with Sergeant @ Arms duty despite having spent all day in the room! All in all a really entertaining evening. (TRACY)