Wednesday’s meeting opened on a decidedly Festive note after the Christmas party on Saturday! Kicking off things with gusto, our lovely Topicsmaster, Merrilyn, announced the very innovative idea that deciding who would be given what topic would be done by picking names randomly out of a container! I can see that this is a practice that will quite likely catch on at Vox Club meetings -no more trying to hide behind the person in front of you when the Topicsmaster is announcing the topics LOL
Jacinta, who did an excellent job as Grammarian for the night, also came up with an innovation of her own – she produced a lovely box of Roses and announced that each person who used the word of the day ‘ineffable’ could select a sweetie from said box! Wow! I was racking my brains trying to think of a sentence with the word ‘ineffable’ in it as soon as Jacinta made that announcement. Whereas I failed miserably to come up with a sentence, however, no less than TWELVE Vox members used the word of the day on the night!! Watch this space Folks, another trend that is set to take off at Club meetings going forward!
Merrilyn’s excellent topics brought a diverse and witty range of responses. Rosie revealed to us that she had been in close proximity to no less than two celebrities during Christmas one year, Sinead O’Connor and Ronnie Drew. Jacinta shared with us her inspirational topic of how she has found her dream job in producing sketches and paintings as her own business, winning the prize for Best topic in the process! Andrea told us that her dream job would be as the personal masseuse of the All Blacks rugby team (a heartfelt wish that I would say was shared by half the audience).
The subject of phobias drew some animated responses from Vox members. Anne Marie bravely told us that she is not afraid of any animals. We learned from Ahmad however, that he had had a chronic fear of spiders until he underwent immersion therapy in South America and actually had tarantulas crawling over his person with a shaman chanting over him. Horrific as it might sound it appears to have worked as he revealed to us that he had succeeded in killing his first spider two years ago. So that’s why we had all that rain in 2011! Jeremy revealed that he also undertook immersion therapy to cure him of his fear of consuming fridge water no less!
Jason performed an excellent open mic slot, reading from the work of John Steinbeck and sharing with us the touching story of Tom Steinbeck’s love for his Susan. Muna delivered an excellent and informative stage 8 on the subject of ‘Fracking’ – fracturing hydrocarbons with some great visual aids to boot. Ahmad gave a highly stimulating and powerful stage 9 speech on the subject of ‘Victor Hugo said..’ sharing with us his thoughts on the evolution of ideas.
Tomas gave a deeply moving yet ‘gently witty’ Humorous Speech from the Advanced Manual about his Uncle Joe and shared with us how his Uncle Joe, reminds him of his own father who had passed away some years ago. John Hennessy gave us an entertaining speech from the Advanced Manual ‘Wishing you a Happy Retirement’. John, my sympathies are with anyone who has to share an open plan with ‘Yap, Yap’ and ‘The Hyena’!
The evaluators of the night did an excellent job with their supportive and encouraging feedback, hats off to Stephen, Merrilyn, Elaine and Susan on their very thorough evaluations and positive comments to the speakers! Congratulations to Elaine who won the prize for the Best Evaluator of the night!
Colette ran the meeting with a confident and steady hand throughout in her role as Toastmaster. Anne Marie and Madeline were fantastic in their roles as Timer and Ah Counter respectively and finally a special mention to Mark who did a brilliant job as General Evaluator for the first time at Wednesday’s meeting!
So that was it! Another excellent Vox Populi club meeting behind us and plenty more to come with one more meeting before Christmas on the 18th in the Harbour Playhouse, Portobello and many more to follow in 2014!
In the meantime, could anyone fix me a glass of fridge water?
Gemma Shannon
Vice President Public Relations, Vox Populi Toastmasters