Meeting #107 Wednesday 3rd July, 2014

Theme: Balderdash

And so, with a meeting theme of 'Balderdash', Jim Yates, our new President, welcomed 15 of us, on a balmy summer evening.

But our meeting was anything but balderdash as Toastmaster Sherena ably led us through the programme, in her usual affable, encouraging manner.

We began with John's wonderful Table Topics and were treated to a theme of 'old words which have dropped out of use'. John's uber challenging questions led to talks about Inspector Gadget, disappointing A-Level results, Lahore's Food Street, boring Bowls, nearly new tools on eBay and sausages!

John described his number of topics as 'A Burglar's Dozen – twelve with one missing'. So Ron had a mammoth job in evaluating all eleven of our speakers. He did this accurately and also encouraged participant Kamila, who joined on the night, by saying, 'You told it with a smile.' Fesl won the ribbon for best Table Topic.

Chris, evaluated by Louise and Nick, evaluated by Adeel, entertained us with their top-class CC5 speeches. Nick won the ribbon for the best speech; Adeel won the ribbon for best evaluator.

Grammarian Jim talked about the use of superlatives and tautology and 'very unique', his pet hate. He rounded off his report cleverly by using the word of the day, 'If you are laconic – succinct, about what you say, then you don't um and ah.' Ah Counter Paul Denton had just noted that Jim hadn't used any!

Bill delivered one of our club's best general evaluations. We can all learn from his consistently superb evaluations.

Jim rounded off the meeting by telling us several of his excellent ideas for the future, including 'striking a balance between tradition and trying new things'. So come along to our meetings to find out more of his ideas and to put yours forward.