We last meeting basked in summer heat and guess what. With four speeches, including an impromptu one by our past President Florian, we raised the temperature yet further! Robert took charge of the meeting as Toastmaster for the very first time (well done Robert!) and quickly introduced his team of functionaries for the evening. Christophe as timekeeper, Andrew as grammarian and last but not least, Cleo as harkmaster.
Andy did the first speech of the evening ‘A Caribbean Pirate’ telling us the story of Wolfie, a dog his family adopted while he was working in the Caribbean. Thomas followed on by beginning his speech ‘Practice Pratice’ with a reference to Carnegie Hall and how only the best musicians perform here. The secret to performing here is indeed practice and Thomas told us a personal story of how as a cello player, he and a friend could have avoided making a routine mistake by practicing more. The third speech was an impromptu one delivered by Florian who was asked what he would do if he became UK Foreign Secretary. Visits to Germany, Russia, France and the United States featured in the speech and an insistence that the UK should always be open to others. Finally, Fahad in the last speech of the meeting ‘The Most Powerful Force in the Universe’ told us the power of exponential growth. A power illustrated by mankind’s population growth since antiquity, house price inflation and many more examples. The value of the pound if our pocket is diminishing as we speak, scary…
John, Sophia, Romain and Tatiana evaluated the speakers in turn, giving them feedback on their strong points and areas for improvement.
More impromptu speaking followed after a short break with AK taking control as table topics master. AK came up with questions based on how people would behave in an alternate universe were they were infamous politicians. These could be Nigel Farage pursued by a mob or Donald Trump with his wig falling off. Guests and members took turns answering these questions and were provided feedback on their performance by table topic evaluator Terry.
John and Cleo then came back for their respective reports followed by our general evaluator Karthik.
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