The winners of this evening's voting were:-
Best Table Topics: Jan
Best Evaluator: Tony
Best Speech: Alan
Monday the 4th of August was an evening of new beginnings. Kieran and Sanjay began their journey along the path to competent communicator with two wonderful icebreaker speeches. Ruth, Carl and Jo tackled the roles of Grammarian, Table Topics Master and Timekeeper for the first time. Well done to you all! It was also bring a friend/grab a biscuit evening and it was great to see so many new faces.
The meeting opened with Alan our president reminding us of a thought provoking quote by Aristotle “We are what we repeatedly do” and that in Harrovians we have the opportunity to practice speaking repeatedly in a number of roles. Mistakes are allowed and repetition will allow our confidence to grow. Alan welcomed our visitors Pat Bennett and Mike Robinson from Athenians.
Toastmaster Narran introduced the evening’s theme The Games that People like to play. Harrovians certainly seem to enjoy a wide variety of games – everything from Mousetrap to Squash!
The world of the day – set by our Grammarian Ruth – was Joyous/Joyously and everyone seemed to enjoy inserting this into their speeches and using it whenever possible.
Our Table Topics Master, Carl Wilkinson set the theme of Persuasion. The idea of this session was to get the speakers to persuade the audience to accept a particular point of view or argument. The first topic was the recent libel action by Max Mosley against the News of the World. We experienced Indra extolling the liberating delights of bondage! This caused much amusement. Francis gave a very effective counter-argument from the point of view of publicist Max Clifford.
The next topic was the film Casablanca and the aim was to persuade the audience that this was the best or worst film of all time. Howard masterfully tackled this topic. The film Casablanca is one of the greatest love stories and his short speech focussed on why love is a good thing, why we don’t have enough of it in this world, relationships and why we should have more films like Casablanca.
Kimlesh spoke next about how humour has changed over the last 20 years. Kimlesh is a great fan of Buster Keaton and in his opinion humour went downhill once they started putting soundtracks onto the movies.
Mo spoke about the quote “Life is a game of cards”. Although she wasn’t a card player she was keen to learn.
Charmaine’s speech centred around the quote “It is better to be beautiful than to be good”. She then had to describe what characteristics she looked for in people – someone with a good heart, warm spirit and attentive manner and used the wonderful quote “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”.
The final table topic was based around the quote by Leonardo da Vinci “The average person looks without seeing, listens without hearing and talks without listening”. Chetan gave a number of examples from his own life and experiences and asked us all to reflect enjoy and be patient.
A big welcome to our guests – Howard, Tracey, Ramaya, Katherine and Elsa who shared their stories of what had led them to come to Harrovians and their hopes for the future.
VPE, Mandip then spoke briefly on a number of new initiatives for Harrovians.
(1) The Brain Storming Forum - this new forum has just been set up - postings are invited.
(2) The Evaluation Committee - members have the opportunity to get involved and share the VPE role with others.
(3) The Speakers Bureau - providing a platform to experienced speakers to speak to an external audience.
If anyone is interested in finding out more about any of these, please contact Mandip.
Our first speaker of the evening, Sanjay told us “The Story of Me and My Glasses”. He took us back to his childhood and an unnerving encounter with a gang of knife-welding boys at Harrow on the Hill Station on a journey to the opticians at the age of 12.
Speaker No.2 Kieran began his speech by asking us if we remembered our first love. Judging by the show of hands Harrovians are certainly a romantic lot! His poignant tale of lost love and regrets really tugged at the heart strings and resounded with us all.
Linda shared the trials and tribulations of packing for a holiday with us and provided us with a number of informative tips on how to get more into that suitcase!
Continuing on the theme of holidays, Lorna told the story of her “Adventures in Dorset”. Lorna certainly captured the magic and mystery of the beautiful town of Swanage.
A big thanks to our speech evaluators Mandip, Saley, Francis and Shirley for their observations, advice and encouragement.
A final thanks to Pat Bennett from Athenians for her well observed general evaluation. It’s always great to get a fresh perspective in the form of views of someone from another toastmasters club.
The evening finished with Alan inviting everyone to buy him a beer in the bar!
The winners of this evenings speeches were:-
Best Table Topic: Indra
Best Speech: Kieran
Best Evaluator: Shirley
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