AUTUMN ALREADY

Thoughts from this year’s the first September meeting at Heart Speakers

We are used to having frequent guests at Heart of England Toastmasters Club. However, four guests on the first meeting after the summer holidays is a nice surprise for any club. We hope they all felt welcome as they were met and greeted and given name badges!

So, opening the meeting, the Club President and Toastmaster of the evening, Tanya Barad, pointed out some changes in the agenda and introduced the other roles. One of the changes was that because yours truly needed more time to get ready, Charles, the other scheduled speaker, generously agreed to start first. Hereby lies

Thought number 1: Arrive early.

It is standard practice to begin with a Warm-up session, which will ease everyone into the evening, break ice and set the tone. What is not standard is for the warm-up lead - Rachel in this case – to ask us all to quickly recall the best holiday destination or…wait for it…our favourite cheese! We were smiling even before we started the Warm-up! Therefore,

Thought number 2: Prepare to have fun.

There were three speeches: Charles with ‘Storytelling: the forgotten secret’’, myself with ‘’Genocide? What Genocide?’’, and James with ‘’A Love Affair’’, which, incidentally, was not about what you thought about! Whilst Charles highlighted the dangers of ‘over-texting’ PowerPoint presentations with some truly amusing slides, I recalled some gruesome events over a hundred years ago, and James demonstrated a persuasive role play on sales techniques. Hence,

Thought number 3: Prepare to be surprised.

We had some skilful evaluations from Mish, Tony and Sanat, including Table Topics and General Evaluations, as well as those of our speeches, and a ‘first’ from Steve, which was acknowledged and congratulated. Grammarian of the night, James, commended one of the guests, Puvan, on using the word of the day: ‘lucid’. He mentioned, he’d had a pint during the break, which made him that: lucid!

Thought number 3: We learn things in unexpected ways.

Table Topics never disappoints at Toastmasters, I find. Designed to develop on-the-spot thinking and off-the-cuff speaking, it gives a chance to those without a role on the night to participate, and perhaps, bit by bit overcome the fear of being wrong or appearing stupid. You get selected to speak on a given topic, and within a short minute or two, you may or may not come up with something brilliant. Sadiq, our newest member, did. When asked by the marvellous Table Topics Master Mark to choose an object from a box of goodies he’d brought especially, Sadiq took out an orange. In his short impromptu speech, he proceeded to pose a question: What would you do if you got a lemon instead? Make lemonade, he said, never be disappointed! So,

Thought number 4: When you let your imagination loose, you may end up with a life-affirming philosophy.

After the awards (Best Speaker, Best Evaluator, and Best Table Topics Speaker) – which happens at every meeting – we closed the meeting and headed to the bar, where a relaxed friendly conversation revealed everyone’s whereabouts over the summer and their hopes for the rest of the year. I am astonished at what different walks of life we come from, and am grateful we’ve come together here, as chances are we would most likely not meet one another otherwise. And that would have been a shame. So, I leave you with

Thought number 5: Prepare to make new friends.

P.S. Club members who weren’t there, we missed you!

If you happen to be in the West Midlands UK, visit us for a free trial or two on any 1^st and 3rd Tuesday of the month (check for dates in January and December), for a 7.30pm start at The Greswolde Arms Hotel, 1657 High Street, Knowle, Solihull B93 0LL

Find us online: http://www.heartspeakers.org.uk;
https://www.facebook.com/HeartSpeakers; 

@HOESpeakers; http://www.toastmasters.org/ 

Prepared by N. V Hovhannisyan, Vice President Public Relations

Follow me on @Naneh_V_H