Regular Meeting Report for 28th October 2015

What a special evening this was. The first ever time that Excalibur had a regular scheduled 2^nd meeting in the month. Twice as much opportunity for Excaliburgers goodness!  

Our President, Freddie, kicked things off, telling an amusing story about Lionel Richie before inviting us to consider the benefits of mentoring. He suggested that the club starts a formal mentoring system and asked for members to share with him their expectations from such a system.

Our Toastmaster, Paul, made extra effort with his speaker introductions during the evening as was specified by his CL manual project. He kept the meeting moving and made it fun and interesting.

Our Timer was Anne who not only kept time but also gave us a funny table topic on how she used to sell eels in Clapham Junction. You had to be there!

Table Topics were led by Daniel, whose topics covered eels, orchids, social enterprise and management consultancy. The best topic was won by a visitor, Irene, who had us rolling up, rolling up as she showed us her convincing impression of a market trader.

We were lucky to have Clodagh from Early Birds join us for her speech from the Humorous Speaking manual. She told us about the pitfalls and opportunities for writing a book.

We were also lucky to be joined by our Irene, from Berkeley Square Speakers, and our Division B Humorous Speech champion. She gave us a rendition of the speech that won that Division title and that she will be using at the District 91 Humorous Speech finals in Swindon on November 7^th.

Finally our own VPE, Karthik, told us a folk tale, Project 1 from the Story Telling manual. He told us the fascinating story about the origins of Indian festival of Diwali.

Best speaker was won by Irene. We wish her well as our Area and Division champion at the finals.

Evaluations were undertaken by Katja, Freddie and Simon. Each provided valuable advice to the speakers. Best evaluator was Freddie who looked very pleased with himself!

Our General Evaluator was Marc. Marc gave us his perspective on how a club like Excalibur should cater to its members needs and challenged us to higher levels of achievement, Plenty for us to ponder.

Finally, our President, Freddie, closed the meeting, handing out the prizes and encouraging us all to the bar!

Our next meeting will be held on November 11^th and we will be joined by both our Area Director, Daniel and Division Director, Neil. It promises to be a great meeting. Hope to see you there!