Written by Svetlana
Introduction
Bloomsbury Speakers Club hosted its regular meeting on Monday 9th February 2015 with an enthusiastic opening from President Jo who emphasized how important guests and new members are to keep Toastmasters meetings vibrant and diverse in talent, and how exactly they can take advantage of Toastmasters clubs to reach their objectives, overcome fears and grow into confident and effective communicators with the help of the enabling learning environment, resources, and expert support from fellow Toastmasters.
Prepared Speeches
After the Introduction, Jo handed the meeting over to the Toastmaster of the Evening Carrie, whose energetic manner and the theme of the Evening turned the event into the type Bloomsbury Speakers is famous for – true intellectual entertainment and the best place to be on a cold and damp February evening! The theme of the night was our experiences of Tactlessness: whether we were affected by someone else’s tactlessness or acted tactlessly ourselves. Carrie generously shared her experience of being subject to very loving and caring but nevertheless outrageous tactlessness from her dear ones as she was growing into an independent unmarried young lady!
Carrie introduced functionaries of the day: Mengbing the Timekeeper and Jo (our President) the Grammarian. Mengbing’s story of experiencing tactless treatment was short. Someone dared to say to her face that she was not pretty. She thought that they could not be serious! What a great spirit! Jo introduced the word of the day “ingenious” and encouraged the meeting participants to use it as well as to be aware of their speech habits and try and use beautiful language so she could provide feedback at the end of the meeting on language usage.
There were four prepared speeches on the agenda. The first speaker Tadgh (whose experience of accidentally offending a friend was when he asked very unflatteringly about his friend’s spouse and that spouse was standing next to his friend! No. 1 Icebreaker Speech Project “Me, My Name, and I” started with a much valued explanation of the pronunciation of his name and some other typically Irish names, then focused on his family and weddings of a large and jolly family, also typically Irish. Tadgh’s speech was quite entertaining and peppered with humour. We all thoroughly enjoyed it!
Peter L. (who is fighting his own tactless behaviour of being late to Toastmaster meetings) delivered Speech No. 5 “Sartorial Semiotics” devoted to the meaning of clothes and that we intentionally or unintentionally disclose a lot about ourselves to the society by wearing them in a certain way. We are judged by our clothes. Our attire sends a coded message about a social group we belong to as each social group uses certain style of clothes as “a uniform” to identify itself among many others. When we try to break boundaries and express personal freedom through clothes we inadvertently fall out of one social group into another. There is no freedom from sartorial semiotics. Peter L. used props – various hats to show how the message was changing with just that one item of clothing.
Sam (who wrote “Happy Birthday” on his colleague’s leaving card) in his advanced entertaining speech called “Predators of the Concrete Jungle”, compared deadly dangers of jungle such as leopard, venomous snake and Ebola virus to hazards, which surround us in cities, such as staircases, ladders, vehicles, and fire. Statistics shows just how much more dangerous these were for people than the feared predators of the jungle. Sam gave us instructions on how exactly we could safeguard ourselves from being injured or worse. His closing piece of advice was to take care not to start a fire as we sit at a candlelit romantic dinner table on St Valentine’s.
Rufina (who finds it tactless when men claim they can discipline women) in her advanced informative speech called “What’s Wrong With Me?” explored why people cannot be content and happy with what they have. She shared about various stages of her life when she was getting what she wanted but the attainment of the desired things did not make her happy. She found out from reading a research results that the level of happiness sometimes depended on the overall happiness level of people around us and that also depended on other things present in that area, therefore, there were cities and towns where happiness level of people was simply higher than in other places.
We had warmly hosted guest introductions from Carrie and well-balanced and well-structured thorough evaluations from Ash, Joe, Svetlana, and Peter F.
Table topics
Table topics session conducted by Egor (who confessed he didn’t have any sense of tact and could judge his tactlessness by the reaction his remarks make on others; he told a lady that he thought she was the same age as him, and she turned out to be 8 years younger) had a number of quite tricky and interesting questions.
“How can you tactfully reject someone you don’t like?” went to Emma, who told us a story about being rejected in a French manner, being invited to Paris to a nice dinner with a man with a fancy name Fabrice who then let her know he had a wife and children. She compared it with a manner of rejection, which an Englishman would probably use simply by saying, sorry, I am married and unavailable. It would probably been less embarrassing although maybe just as hurtful.
“What’s your response to a colleague’s tactless comment: speak to HR, forget it, or plan a bitter revenge?” went to Robert, who said he would have pondered all possible ways to react and at the end after rehearsing them in his head he would find that the cons outweighed the pros and would drop the issue and forget about it.
“Should we only say good things about dead people or not to speak about them at all, as the Russian proverb suggested; would you agree with it or not?” went to Svetlana who gave an example of an anecdote of perestroika and glastnost period in the former Soviet Union, when newspapers were obsessed with Stalin’s theme. An old “babushka” said how much she hated Stalin because of the atrocities he was committing every day. When told that he was dead for many years she said then why newspapers were writing about him as if he was alive, and not about current affairs. When we speak of the past we should be more analytical and speak of its relevance for today. Speaking about the dead we shouldn’t take advantage of them just because they cannot defend themselves.
“Should tactlessness from a drunken person be tolerated?” went to Luca, who said he didn’t drink and didn’t have any excuse if he behaved tactlessly.
“Should we be tactful with religious people or should we be honest and defend equality and freedom?” went to Lio who said she grew in a Christian household and stopped being religious as an adult. Contentious issues arise quite often. Her policy is to smile, accept it, and have peaceful relationship especially in the family.
Grammarian Jo’s report was thorough and very educational as usual with many examples along with some recommendations to the speakers.
It was followed by General Evaluation from Stephen Costin, ACCA members Breakfast Club, who provided a lot of positive feedback and very helpful recommendations to all participants who were not evaluated. His speech was enthusiastic and peppered with dry humour.
Awards
Icebreaker ribbon has handed to Tadgh; best speaker award was handed to Peter L.; best evaluator award went to Henry; and best impromptu speech award went to Emma!!!
Next meeting
Our next event is our Inspiring Evaluations Workshop on Monday, 23rd of February upstairs at The Clerk and Well, 156 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm. To attend please register at: https://inspiring-evaluations-bloomsbury-2015.eventbrite.co.uk. More details about the event are included in our Feb Newsletter: https://www.bloomsburyspeakers.org.uk/2015/02/february-newsletter-contests-approaching/
