Written by Svetlana
Introduction
Bloomsbury Speakers Club hosted its regular meeting on Monday 22th June 2015 with an enthusiastic opening from President-in-Waiting Helen!
Prepared Speeches
After the Introduction, Helen handed the meeting over to the Toastmaster of the Evening, Hari, who introduced the theme of the day, which words of wisdom we would give to the dear ones as a farewell. A very dramatic question was handled mainly with humour and wit.
Functionaries of the day were: Michelle, the Timekeeper, and Sarah, the Grammarian, who introduced the word of the day “audacious”.
There were four prepared speeches on the agenda. The first speaker was Paul who delivered his No. 1 Icebreaker Speech, entitled “Father’s Day”, which was a great story about two generations of fathers – his own father and the kind of father he was to his sons. While being a personal story with some dramatic moments, it also had lots of humour and poetry intertwined. Zita delivered her No. 2 speech project entitled “Disconnected in the Connected World” and Sheldon’s No. 3 speech “Coping with Semantic Flux” were both quite educational and surprised us with rich language and paradoxes. Alefiyah’s Speech No. 4 The Cultural Identity of a BBCD – British Born Confused Desi” was packed with quite exotic blend of episodes and details from her rich background and family stories and facts and prove that there is no easy answer to a simple question such as “Where are you originally from?”.
We had warmly hosted guest introductions from Swarajit and thorough evaluations from Tracey, Peter, Bronia, and Svetlana.
Table topics
The table topics session was conducted by Rufina who asked well thought questions, which revealed some ingenuity we have in the club. In particular, Swarajit, as a UN peace keeper, would introduce a ceremonial cake eating as a peace making procedure between leaders of countries at war. Paolo’s advice to disadvantaged teenagers would be to develop their personalities, gain education and not to be after easy money. Peter R.’s parting advice to his daughter who is getting married, would be to remain true to herself. The question “Your son/best friend who is insistent on moving to Australia, what will be your words of wisdom to him?” was answered by India. The question “You work for a charity that deals with offenders in prison. Your assignment is to impact words of wisdom to these offenders. What would you say to them?” went to Harriet. “If you had to part with all your belongings except one, which one item would it be & why?” was answered by Sarah-Anne, who shared a heart-felt story from her life. “The London black cab drivers are demonstrating again. After your recent incident of swearing at a black cab driver blasted all over the news you still have to give a speech to these drivers as the Mayor of London. What would you say?” was bravely handled by Peter F. Melanie shared with us one of her favorite quotes of all times & why it was her favourite.
Egor gave a concise and informative evaluation for topics speakers with some useful analysis and tips for improvement.
Grammarian Sarah’s report was quite substantive.
Andy provided an excellent and thorough general evaluation of the evening with recommendations to all functionaries of the evening and evaluators who were not evaluated.
Awards
Icebreaker ribbon has handed to Paul; best speaker award was handed to Zita; best evaluator award went to Tracey, and best impromptu speech award went to Sarah Ann!
Next meeting
Our next regular meeting is on Monday, 13th of July upstairs at The Clerk and Well, 156 Clerkenwell Rd, London EC1R 5DU. Doors open at 6:30pm.
