Written by Sheldon
Introduction
Bloomsbury Speakers Club hosted its regular meeting on Monday 16th March 2015 with an enthusiastic opening from President Jo who gladly mentioned that there were six first-time guests present – 3 of whom she had just met at the bar – and how Bloomsbury Speakers prides itself on the large numbers of guests and being able to serve as the introduction to toastmasters for so many of them. Jo went on to explain the evolution of Toastmasters and the warm and nurturing atmosphere that meant that participation can only lead to positive consequences.
Prepared Speeches
After the Introduction, Jo handed the meeting over to the Toastmaster of the Evening, Femi, who brought his warm energetic style to the proceedings and urged the audience to keep the intensity high, especially with the enthusiastic clapping as speakers are welcomed up to the stage. Femi kept the mood buoyant as he introduced the theme of spring, and before asking each audience member what they liked best about the season, he shared with the room his own enthusiasm for the prospect of his gas bills going down and moving from debit to credit with his supplier.
Femi introduced the functionaries of the day: Mengbing the Timekeeper and Sheldon the Grammarian. Mengbing’s fondness for spring was in its unexpected nature: that you could just wake up one day and it would be there. Sheldon, for whom spring was a time of looking forward to not having to worry about getting his coat stolen when he didn’t want to pay the cloakroom fee, introduced the word of the day “sanguine”; he explained how the roots of its meaning were from medieval physiology and implored the audience to use it throughout the meeting.
There were four prepared speeches on the agenda. The first speaker was Zita, who described spring like coming out of hibernation. Her No. 1 Icebreaker Speech Project, aptly titled “Facing Fears”, began with a recollection of childhood inhibition which led her to give a self-commissioned violin performance outside of a church; she went on to describe the exhausting deliberation that eventually led her to leave a well-paid, but essentially unwanted, career in Financial Services, and told of how the surprising positivity from this decision spurred her into facing up to many more fears and stepping out into the unknown. Despite admitting to a fear of public speaking at the very beginning, Zita showed no sign of nerves and delivered a highly enjoyable and articulate Ice Breaker.
Axel (for whom Femi postulated the sanguine nature of spring to be what he likes about the season) delivered his No.3 speech – freshly titled “Time Sanguine” – which he began by referring to the rushed nature of the preparation of the speech itself, and how an encouraging email from our president Jo convinced him to go ahead with it despite his intention to cancel. Axel’s anecdotal style brought casual humour throughout, as he told of his woes with “parasite” estate agents and the complications of moving home.
Alefiyah (who likes the beautiful colours of spring) gave her No.3 entitled “How to Transmute a Question Mark?” in which she gifted the audience with an image of several large question marks going about their activity around us, representing all those people unknown to us or who we are too shy to talk to. In a well-structured discourse, Alefiyah told us of her own journey in overcoming her self-perceived shyness, and gave the audience a practical, informative, and highly amusing guide to being able to speak to strangers.
Helen (who likes the promise that summer was just around the corner) gave her No. 9 speech “It’s Not Her Fault!”; this started with a sombre story of a friend who remains adamant that her first sexual experience was the result of her being drugged. Helen then brought up some powerful statistics to highlight prevalence of sexual assault in our society, and highlighted the disparity between the ubiquitous message to women to protect themselves from the stranger in the dark and the fact the 90% of rape survivors knew the men who raped them. As her words became more impassioned, her message resounded: a message that the best way to protect women is to educate men, and a message of the necessity of affirmative consent. The closing moments were marked by the repeated challenge to the audience: “What means yes?”
We had warmly hosted guest introductions from Femi and well-balanced and well-structured thorough evaluations from Tracy (who loves the flowers of spring), Ahmed (who likes the Bank holidays), Rufina (who gets excited that the winter is finally letting go), and Renars.
Table topics
The table topics session was conducted by Peter L, who devised an original and humorous topics theme on the rules and regulations of Toastmasters itself.
“Should table topics speakers always be volunteers?” went to Conor, who spoke of his previous Toastmaster experiences as a guest where he sat quietly in the corner, having in subsequent sessions decided to make more of the experience and volunteer.
“Should Toastmasters be allowed to use swear words?” went to Axel, who made his preference clear from the onset by going straight for the easy laugh, and to much effect. He went on to take a vote from the audience to reveal about 50% share his views.
“How would it be if Toastmasters could wear a mask while giving their speech?” went to Matteo who immediately joked that his English was “too perfect” for the audience. He answered in the affirmative, yet cunningly reset the question to be “can someone speak in front of an audience without understanding the topic?”
“Should Toastmasters be allowed to give speeches on every topic under the sun?” went to Andrew, who said that this should indeed be the case since we live in a democracy, and a free country. “Why not?”, he quipped, on the idea of being able to talk about religion.
“Should Toastmasters be allowed to give wordless performances?” went to Liliana who spoke of her Tango classes where she discovered how to communicate without words and through dancing. However, since it takes far longer to learn how to dance than to learn how to speak in front of an audience she recommended that Toastmasters stick to public speaking.
“What would be suitable for the Timekeeper to give to really overrunning speakers?” went to Sebastian who asserted that taking more time than was on offer was disrespectful to others, and ultimately it was about an understanding of sharing and mutual respect.
“What would be a good initiation for someone reaching their 10th speech?” went to Hannah who recommended that such a feat should require you to “push the boat out” and go television for a political debate.
Henry gave an impressively thorough and informative evaluation for each of the topics speakers, which was well articulated and with good humour and language throughout.
Grammarian Sheldon reluctantly conceded that the standard of language had been excellent and noted the diverse range of speaking styles used for different effects throughout the meeting.
Unfortunately there was no general evaluation in this meeting
Awards
Icebreaker ribbon has handed to Zita; best speaker award was handed to Helen; best evaluator award went to Henry; and best impromptu speech award went to Andrew!
Next meeting
Our next regular meeting is on Monday, 30th of March upstairs at The Clerk and Well, 156 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm.
