Food Fight Night

The Theme tonight was “Food Fight” and Paul kept us all guessing who was fighting over the rights to claim certain foods as their own.

He started a brilliant repertoire which lasted all evening with the usual pavlova saga and moved on to say that Croissants originated in Austria. Oh, the things you learn at Toastmasters meetings!

He was great at keeping us on track throughout the meeting, his timing was impeccable.

Ian involved us in his mission to bring the All Blacks away from corporate sponsoring and back to the ordinary people of New Zealand. He challenged us all to use our skills in the jobs we had to bring them back on form. We were inspired!! By the end of the Table Topics session we were all going to make the team great again. We had Lollipop girls cordoning off areas, pick up coach teaching the muscles for the downward reach, bongo drum experts helping them keep a rhythm, and a feng shui expert helping them “technically, emotionally and metaphysically.” Then a guest who, with a slight south African accent claimed he would be fantastic at being the professional mourning coach for the team. The Best Table topic speech came from Darrell who “leaped and bounded” with ideas about how a goat farmer could help the All Blacks to greatness. So hilarious!

We had three speeches tonight, delivered by Darrell, Johanna, and Angela.

Darrell, in his very laid-back comic way told us about his new Life Mantra, “Why Not?” This mantra has opened his life up to so many new adventures that perhaps would not have happened if he hadn’t said to himself “Why Not”. it is one of the great strengths of Spinnakers meeting is that you are entertained as your mind is stimulated with new ideas and resolutions to improve.

Johanna used the power of three in her speech “They are all around us”. Her Mentors were her parents, her friends and her life partner. All had given her strength, good advice and constancy along her life journey, even when in her teenage years “an alien took over her body” only to return her real self in her twenties. A really thought provoking speech; you can find help by realising that mentors really are all around you.

Angela’s ice-breaker told us a little more about herself – that she was fighting her inner caveman daily. The one that told her to eat like there would be no food tomorrow, it was ok to put off today what you could do tomorrow by “resting between hunts”. It was lovely to see that she had learned to reason with him most times so that she could live a healthy modern life. We were entertained, by recognising that we, the listeners, shared the same issues.

This meeting was the penultimate for the current committee and the outgoing president had a few words of encouragement for everyone. It has been a great year regardless of, or perhaps because of Covid 19. We have learned of a great many new ways to communicate our ideas across the world.

Angela won the best speaker for the night and Megan won the best evaluator on Darrell’s speech.

Paul closed his meeting with saying that Kimchi was not in fact Korean. Can you guess who claims the rights to it?

Meeting report by Jacqui.