From dark, green frogs, to Italia 90, to vegetarianism, the topics session on Wednesday 
night revealed all kinds of fascinating things about Vox members, thanks to the engaging topics from our lovely Topics master for the night, Muireann. She opened the Topics session with a group warm up activity which had the whole room in stitches, giving us the first four words of a story ‘Once upon a time…’ with each member of the group adding a further four words until the story was complete. Definitely one to repeat at another club meeting!
The Marketers amongst us were then called to the stage to ‘sell’ us a variety of mysterious objects. First up was Jean Marie, who proceeded to sell us an avocado under the premise that ‘If you eat this it will be part of your five a day, keep you healthy, strong and good looking.’ Makes me want to rush out and buy an avocado immediately! Next up was Colette, who in the process of ‘selling’ us some sieved tomatoes, revealed that she had managed to convince her three year old brother, when she was younger, that a tube of tomato paste was actually strawberry flavoured toothpaste! The outcome was not a pretty sight LOL.
On the topic of what role she would adopt in the group on a weekend away with friends, Michelle shared with us that she would be our cook for the weekend and treat us all to her speciality, “chocolate, avocado mousse cake”. Yum! In fact Michelle’s delicious descriptions of her vegetarian cooking had us all so enthusiastic about it (and hungry) that she was awarded the prize for the best topic of the night! Congratulations Michelle!
Moving on to Deirdre who shared with us that her ‘sacred cow’ is her car; she loves to park it under a tree. She is not the only fan of her car, however; the birds like it too! Jeremy Emmet Booth revealed that he would love to be 18 again as he could get away with things at that age such as inappropriate conversations with all sorts of people! I wouldn’t like to tell you what sort of inappropriate conversations I had when I was eighteen! Our Poetmaster for the night, Anna Maria gave us a sensitive and moving evocation of Patrick Kavanagh’s beautiful poem ‘Inniskeen Road’, revealing that she had actually been to Inniskeen Road when she visited Kavanagh’s grave.
Jeremy Emmet Booth gave us a powerful and eloquent CC2 speech about the United Irishman, Robert Emmet and his secret and passionate love affair with Sarah Curran, while he was plotting rebellion. Jeremy certainly takes after his famous ancestor – he revealed at the end of his speech that Robert Emmet is actually Jeremy’s Great, Great Uncle.
Silvia gave us a stimulating and entertaining CC4 with great use of props. She gave us 3 qualities of books, 3 of Kindle, and asked the audience to decide which one was the winner. She also raised the Health and Safety issue of having a Kindle -What if you drop your kindle in the bath while reading it there? Might just mean a new Kindle to say the least!
Congratulations to Ahmad on completing his CC10 with an impassioned and heartfelt delivery about the process of inspiration and the role of rituals in our everyday lives. He encouraged us all not to wait for the Law of Attraction to make it happen, but to ‘go out and make it happen yourself.’
Fiona, Muna and Maria MacMullan gave three excellent evaluations of Jeremy, Silvia and Ahmad respectively. Congratulations to Maria MacMullan on her strong and positive evaluation of Ahmad, for which she won the prize for the Best Evaluation! Well done also to the other Vox members doing roles; Madeline on Timer, Colette as Grammarian and Maria McGrath as Ah Counter and Jean Marie as General Evaluator who each gave very comprehensive and informative reports on each of their respective roles for the night. Our lovely Toastmaster Deirdre did a fantastic job of keeping the meeting on track and encouraging everyone to get into the ‘spirit of summer’ with her summer theme to the meeting.
So what will you be doing this summer? Will you be getting ready for the beach and party season or will you be at home practising your next speech for Toastmasters? Here’s a compromise: practice that speech but deliver it on the beach right in the middle of party season. I can guarantee you, you’ll never look back!
Gemma Shannon, VP Public Relations