What a whopper!

Well this was a whopper of a meeting with 23 people attending. There were members, guests and visiting Toastmasters from various clubs as far away as South Africa. This all made for a fun evening with a theme of 'Books' which was expertly run by Toastmaster, Pam.

There were 3 speeches, 2 of which were Icebreakers (your first speech that introduces you to the club), from 3 different Pathways (the Toastmasters development programme) - Presentation Mastery, Storytelling & Leadership Development, so the night was pretty varied.

Winners

Icebreaker Ribbons - Lorna Stockwood &  Mano Manoharan

Best Table Topics - Ola (visting VPM from Manchester Communicators)

Best Speaker - Lorna Stockwood

Best Evaluator - Colm Copeland 

Our President Kate was the Toastmaster, and she picked a theme of 'You have been watching' for the evening, and was helped by Tim our Table Topics Master who gave us some interesting film & TV based topics to speak about, which culminated in Karen Lee spouting forth a potential new 10 part Netflix series 'Toastmasters in Love', with an ensemble cast starring the Didsbury Speakers motley crew.

There were 3 full speeches on diverse topics - The 3 Peaks Challenge, the harm a little yellow and black jacketed insect can do and the potential to incinerate the universe using the periodic table!! We don't do ordinary here.

The Winners

Best Speaker Award - Colm Copeland    
Best Table Topics Award - Joint winners - Lorna Stockwood & Karen Lee Turner        
Best Evaluator Award - Bryony Williams    

Tonight we held our club's first ever online Humorous & Table Topics competitions, and it mostly went off without any hitches, just a couple of times we lost a competitor of two in the breakout room, though all came good in the end.

Our winners, who head on to the next round, were:

Best Humorous Speech - Pam Rowley

Best Table Topic - Susan H

Moving is like changing a pot for the flower which can grow and spread its roots. With those words our president has welcomed us to our first meeting at new venue at The Village Hotel in Cheadle.

It was an evening filled with enthusiasm, fun, new ideas, foreign idioms, and lots of smiles!
All speakers including meeting facilitators were able to practice good speaking skills: looking at the audience, speaking not too fast (and trying to take time to take a breath), using stage correctly and using body language to help convey the message. Also we were reminded it was important to clear the stage for next speaker.

The ribbon for best impromptu speaking went to Kamila who had spoken about everybody's Toastmasters plans for the year 2020.

Best prepared speech was awarded to first-timer John who conquered his fears and delivered his motivational speech-about speaking with stutter- in professional manner - we could not believe it was his first time!

Best evaluation ribbon was awarded to Natalie who gave many ideas to the speaker on how to improve her speaking by breathing!

Some say to learn you need to go out of your comfort zone. We say you can extend your comfort zone to practice. With a safe environment and lots of positive encouragement you can progress faster. There is no failure - as long as you keep trying. If you keep trying – you will improve. See you all in two weeks. Why not use this time to keep practicing the speaking skills every time you speak?

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.