Written by Carrie
Introduction
The Perseverance pub kindly hosted us following a last minute venue switch for our regular meeting on Monday 12th October 2015.
Since our President was held up en route to the meeting, our Toastmaster for the evening, Henry, stepped in to welcome us with a warm and witty overview of tonight’s agenda.
As his theme for the evening, Henry had surveyed our ‘dominant feelings’ on the season of Autumn prior to the meeting, but to catch up on time, he was unable to share results with us, reassuring the audience that he could make use of our emotive responses by using them to write some poetic literature!
Functionaries of the day were Sarah, who kept us to time, and Carrie, who as grammarian, introduced us to her word of the day “congruent”.
Speeches
Fabiano introduced himself to the Bloomsbury gang with his ice breaker entitled “We are our choices”, sharing his entrepreneurial ventures, his major life decisions, and how they have impacted his life.
Peter also broke the ice in this extra chilly Toastmasters meeting telling us all about his story to date, dividing his speech up into alliterative chunks which were easy for the audience to digest. We learnt plenty about his favourite ‘places, people and philosophies’.
Sheldon entertained us with his speech project number 5, “Emotional Resonance”, which gave us a technical yet highly comedic insight into why music impacts our emotions. With real audio features, he demonstrated the power of music to bring any story to life – even one about washing a pair of pants.
Rufina took us into advanced speech territory with an informative and inspiring review of her recent safari in her speech, “Hakuna Matata Holiday”.
Just before the congregation hopped off to sample the Perservance bar in a refreshment break, Michelle gave a warm welcome to our guests.
Table Topics
Our table topics mistress for the evening, Michelle, kicked off part two of the meeting with an impromptu speaking session which focused on the festive delights of this distinctive Autumnal season.
Our first impromptu speaker, Robert, was asked to tell us what kind of superhero he would attend a Halloween party as, while Egor was challenged to reveal the gory details of his favourite scary film of all time.
Olga told us all about her favourite winter snack, and Paul told us all about his favourite sport as we reflected upon the rugby World Cup mania hitting the country this week.
Ayesha closed our lively table topics session with an amusing and imaginative review of her perfect winter get away.
Our table topics evaluator, Peter Francis, gave a positive and fluent review of all the impromptu speeches we just had seen with some tips for improvement, before our grammarian, Carrie, took to the stage to give her detailed report. Carrie shared examples of powerful rhetorical devices used throughout the night, whilst reminding us how important is it to use language to appeal to the listener’s emotional brain.
Our General Evaluator for the evening, Jonathon Mueller from Russian speakers, finished the meeting with a dynamic, engaging and dare we say, brutally honest, review of everyone who hadn’t been evaluated until now. He concluded that despite the tardy start due to challenging venue circumstances, the meeting was a great success, with plenty of talent in the room – good job Bloomsbury speakers!
Awards
The best speaker award went to Peter Richardson, best evaluator award to Peter Francis and best table topic speaker went to our guest, Ayesha.
Fabiano and Peter were awarded their ice-breaker ribbons.
Next meeting
Our next regular meeting is on Monday 26 October 2015 at our normal venue at The Clerk & Well
156 Clerkenwell Road, London, EC1R 5DU, London
