Gary chaired the Spinnaker 7 June meeting with the theme of “Seasons”.  We had one guest Lin who was checking out our club, and 3 online toastmasters.

Kathy led table topics with the theme of “Seasons” also, and challenged each speaker on an aspect of seasons.  Dirk’s favourite winter clothing is a snowboard jacket; Darrell said Love Actually is his favourite Christmas season movie, and Dave loved the sound of kids at the beach in the summer season.  Sarah’s favourite sound of winter was going to sleep listing to the rain pounding on the roof, but she was not keen on the wind and rain when tending to her horse.  Lin’s favourite summer holiday spot was anywhere near a mountain with a river or sea nearby, and Katina’s favourite winter holiday spot was being at home curled up on the couch with a blankie and a hot water bottle.  Dale’s early retirement years are spent teaching kids to swim which means it doesn’t matter what the season is outside, and Gary thought that daylight saving should be extended to winter as well.

Katina evaluated table topics and complimented Kathy on coming up with table topics to match the meeting’s theme of Seasons, and she thought everyone’s descriptive language conjured up lovely mental images.

Speaker 1 was Jacqui with “Why the cock crows at dawn”.  This speech was a proposal and needed audience interaction so she opened by asking the audience to ask their neighbour how did they feel waking up this morning.  Her proposal was to get to bed on time and turn off all electronics by 9 pm to allow a good wind down ready for a good night’s sleep.  Evaluator Dave recommended Jacqui get to the point early in the speech so we knew what it was about, but he thought Jacqui excelled at the small stuff of speech delivery with gestures, no notes and lots of humour.

Speaker 2 was Angela introduced by Darrell, a level 1 Research and Presenting speech.  Angela chose to talk about the TV programme Survivor, and is a great fan having watched since season 1 in 2000.  She outlined how the programme works, its challenges and the process of gaining immunity.  Evaluator Darrell said the speech was well put together and the slide presentation was simple and showed the research had been undertaken, thus fulfilling the requirements of this project.

Speaker 3 was Ron who was doing a repeat of an Icebreaker for a new path, and was trying to be a bit philosophical.  His previous evaluator had recommended he slow down a bit and keep to time.  Evaluator Dale said that Ron sounded like a jack of all trades and master of none, but we all know that’s not true.  Ron used the classic triad of where he has been, what he’s doing now and where he’s going in his speech structure and Dale thought it was a delightful speech in which she learnt something new about Ron.

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If you’re reading this blog post and think you could deliver a speech on your favourite topic, or answer a table topic on a specific subject within two minutes, then come and have a go.  Spinnaker Toastmasters welcomes visitors to our club and we make sure you have a good time.  Contact us to enquire about our next meeting, and get out of the house for a couple of hours to have some fun.