Club Blog...

7 December - What does it mean?

We started with 'table topics' where anyone can be invited to speak for up to two minutes without preparation time on the topic for the evening.

The table topics were a series of words that we are unlikely to have heard before let alone know their meanings so it meant there was some serious adlibbing to be done. The stories ranged from the word being the name of a new font, to being an ancient word describing your distant relative. There was much hilarity in between.

There were 4 prepared speeches. Zaklina made an entertaining first speech which followed the adventures of the Blue Fiesta, Jane spoke about how the term 'hard work' has changed over the years from heavy physical labour. Ben revealed his battles in the past, and Mike's advanced speech involved a role play persuading someone to consider buying a conservatory even as it turned out it was for a North facing garden.

The evening was very entertaining despite a few last minute cancellations and others stepping into the roles needed to run the evening. I hope the 5 new visitors felt welcome and discovered how they could benefit from Chiltern Speakers in more ways than they expected. (Krys)

5 October - Hubble Bubble

Ben Bergonzi hosted the evening in his customary warm and welcoming style, giving everyone immediate confidence that everything would be well organised. Phil Sheahan was table topics master for the first time and presented some real challenges. His topic was food - which we can all relate to - but then came the twist! Contributions included Brian Sanders' opinion of soup and Tracy Miranda's lack of enthusiasm about chocolate cake. and Debbie who managed brilliantly to promote a vegetarian restaurant while betraying (with frequent slips of the tongue) her strong preference for meat dishes.

The prepared speeches continued the theme when Joanna Ward and her Mongolian Barbecue had us all hoping for an invitation to her place soon. Phil Renshaw sporting a new beard brought fascinating and recent tales of his experiences living with the Masai tribe for two weeks. His speech objective was to use props effectively which he certainly did - producing a highly decorated talking stick and a purely imagined leader's cloak. Jane Penson almost convinced us that she was a witch, using variations of voice tone, speed and pitch and ending with a magic trick where she made water disappear. Mike Kavanagh stepped in to cover for a last minute absence with a tale about the Irish including some reasons why they have collected the entirely unjustified reputation of being stupid.

Evaluations, always a very important part of the evening, were carried out with care and sensitivity. Even Stewart Linford, who is reputed to be very direct at times, was complimentary about the witch speech and the pair of them got best speaker and best evaluator prizes to take home.

Everyone who wanted a spot on stage was able to have one, and the visitors who chose to observe had a great evening's entertainment for free. We hope you will be there for the next meeting.

5 September - What a load of Rubbish!

Mike Kavanagh chaired a well attended and highly energetic contest meeting at Beaconsfield. A double act by Kris Duvall and Sue Andrews warmed us up with randomly selected people telling whoppers about their neighbours and then being judged by the audience about the credibility of their story. Then the main part of the evening started with four humorous speeches.

• Phil Sheahan cracked us up with the tale of his smart new French car and his unsuccessful attempts to change the wheel.
• Stewart Linford appeared (or was it Winston Churchill himself) next and related his experiences in the annual celebrations at Bletchley
• Jane Penson appealed to us on behalf of the charity CompassPoint which supports disnavics (people with no sense of direction).
• Chetan Bhatt appealed to the hoarder in all of us as he explained why each of his items of rubbish could not possibly be thrown away.

The second part of the evening threw five contestants into the deep end as they were each asked by Hilary Symington, with no time for preparation, to describe the street where they live to an alien. Each with a different emphasis rose to the challenge and managed to speak for at least a minute with no sign of hesitation or insurmountable fear.

The contestants were: Esther King, Phil Sheahan, Robert Stuart, Ben Bergonzi and Polly Manser from the Bucks Advertiser who had come to cover the event for the paper but couldn't resist having a go.

Judging, presided over by the club president, Joanna Ward, was quickly and efficiently carried out while the rest of the audience were entertained by more truth and lies.

The winners were Chetan Bhatt and Ben Bergonzi who received their cups from Helen Elliott, the Area Governor. [JANE]

17 August - National day of.....?

Debbie as Toastmaster set the theme for the meeting of 'National Days'. As 17 August does not appear to be a nominated National Day she asked for suggestions from Club members to fill this gap. Table Topics Master, Krys, suggested a National Day of Humour and used National Days as the table topic. Graham rose to the challenge of the humour and won the TT award for the evening with his comic description of Independence Day - as a teenager.

Jim, General Evaluator, who would like to declare a moratorium on emails for one day, introduced Hilary, Mike, Graham and Chris as evaluators and thanked Sue for taking the role of Timer.

Jacqui bravely undertook a Hot Topic and with only a few hours' preparation persuaded us all to indulge in a worthy 'Self Appreciation Day'. Hilary's appreciation of Jacqui's speech won her the Best Evaluator award for the evening.

Phil, who would vote for a National Day of Dreaming, led us through a nightmare journey of French cheeses and regional accents. Robert suggested that we devote one day to digesting our food properly and advised that the day should be called 'Chews Day'. He fortunately did not pursue any further puns and instead gave a very sensitive and engaging talk on the use of pastels in art. We were treated to some fine examples of his artistic talent.

Sue would have us all taking to our bikes to enjoy The Freedom of the City. Her persuasive powers for this healthy undertaking won her Best Speaker for the evening. Not surprisingly her suggestion would be a National Day of Cycling, preferably around London.

Chetan, as Grammarian, didn't put his idea of a National Day of Laziness into practice and energetically summed up the evening's choice phrases and grammar usage.

In Joanna's unavoidable absence, experienced past-presidents Jacqui and Tracy jointly undertook this role. Thanks to Jacqui for opening the meeting and to Tracy for closing it. [DEBBIE}

4 August - The World As We Know It

This evening demonstrates superbly what a creative and entertaining experience being a member of Chiltern speakers is. There was a full agenda and all the talks took an interesting and different view of the world.

For instance the Robert's table topic invited the audience to imagine looking back 500 years to the 21st century. This resulted in some very creative spontaneous talks and Eric was voted the best table topic speech with his amusing view of oral injections - known to most as kissing!

Box Clever was Bogusia's speech, describing the long tradition and practical applications for boxes. She displayed a variety boxes to support her talk; from the purely functional to the decorative and collectible.

Esther had the audience's full attention from the off with her list of disparate items and actions. It transpired that they were all examples of Mindapples which are the equivalent of 5-a-day for keeping the mind healthy and active. Her talk advised that looking after the mind is just as important as the right diet for a healthy body, helping everyone to keep an even keel and be able to take life in their stride.

Tracy told the audience about the Diamond Synchrotron in her talk 'Science on a Grand Scale'. She made what is often a complicated or dry subject very accessible by relating it to the things which affect everyone. Such as the research which lead to the production of an anti-flu drug, the development of a vaccine for Foot & Mouth, and on a more prosaic level a way to improve the snap in our favourite chocolate! Tracy demonstrated her talk and used a chocolate bar as a prop. Surprisingly it lasted the evening intact.

The evening's last speech was from Debbie. 'Procrastination and How to Delay It' was deservedly voted the best speech of the evening as she rightly stated "Procrastination: that embezzler of that precious commodity - time." Everyone identified with Debbie's examples of procrastination - in fact she told us that up to 24% of the population are self-confessed chronic procrastinators! She shared a tip for breaking out of the habit of putting things off by using a 5-step technique to ensure that even the most tedious chore can be accomplished.

There was just enough time to squeeze in a slot on the benefits of the various club committee roles by Jacqui before the evening closed for a 'debrief' over a glass or two. [CHRIS]

20 July - A Bus Journey

It was Sue's first time as the General Evaluator and she used the theme of a bus journey to take us through the evaluations. It is a very apt analogy because joining Chiltern Speakers is just like a journey. You can make it as fast or slow as you want to. What is for sure is that your speaking and listening skills will improve.

Chetan as the Toastmaster lead us on our journey and introduced Eric who was the Table Topics Master for the evening. Each table topics speaker had to speak for 1-2 minutes on subjects that had influenced them during their lives ranging from social reformers to authors, politicians to political thinkers and teachers to business influencers. It was very lively and our guest, Philip from Seymour Speakers in Vancouver rose to the challenge and spoke about his ancestors and what an important piece of the jigsaw they had been in his recent move to the UK.

We then had three very different speeches ranging from beginners to advanced. Krys did her second speech on 'Coffee and Tea'. She gave a brief history and we learned that the calorific value ranges from 0 to 500+ calories depending on the double cream mocha chocca frappucino level. Phil then took us 'Glamping' in Wales. There was plenty of laughter as we went with him on his camping trips as a scout and how cold it was at night, family holidays in a pogo-stick of a caravan and how important the china tea cups were and then finally to what sounded like the most magnificent place to 'glamp' in the world. The irony is that the holiday was booked through www.coldatnight.co.uk.

The final speech was an Advanced Speech called 'The Hot Sell' from Mike as part of the Persuasive Speaking Manual. He had to convince his customer (Joanna) that she didn't in fact want the thermos flasks she was looking for but did want an all singing and all dancing camping stove. Guess what'? A camping stove is exactly what she bought. (JOANNA)

6 July - New Leaf

Tonight has to have been one of the funniest Table Topics ever. Jacqui very cleverly put a twist on it and each topic was carried out by two people. One person had to stand and speak for 1-2 minutes with no hand movements whatsoever whilst the second had to act out what his/her partner was saying. Eric and Brian showed us how to make a paper plane which then actually flew, Esther and Phil showed us how to change a nappy which was brilliant considering neither of them had done so before, Bogusia and Chris L showed us what it takes to get a teenage girl ready to go out. If only Chris had finished his homework...

Chetan and Mark (our guest) changed a wheel and Mike and Philip (another guest) taught us to play rugby.

It was also the first meeting of the Chiltern Speakers year with the new committee at the helm. Jane (our new VP Education) and Toastmaster for the evening very appropriately threaded a 'new leaf' theme throughout the evening which the grammarian, Mike also asked us to try and use when speaking. Krys opened the speeches with her icebreaker called 'For the love of maths' which gave us an insight into her background. Chris R introduced us to 'Stumpwork' which, as we now know, is a traditional form of raised embroidery. Helen delivered her fourth speech from the Advanced Speaker's Manual 'Interpersonal Relations'. She played a the role of a 'coach' and Esther was the recipient of Helen's gentle suggestions on how to improve at work. This was all immaculately timed by Hilary. (JOANNA)

20 April - Conspiracy Theory

A wonderful variety of speeches was enjoyed by all at last Tuesday's meeting. Debbie, as Toastmaster for the evening, introduced speakers by describing their choice of the speech they would most like to give. These 'ultimate' speeches ranged from 'My fabulous life' and a speech contest against Barack Obama, to giving a talk to the British Bankers Association entitled 'Adding Up for Dummies'.

Brian asked volunteers to speak on delicious subjects as his Table Topics centered around food. Sue Andrews made our mouths water when she gave the winning Table Topic describing her favourite foreign meal.

Jacqui's Education Speech gave details of the Competent Leader Manual and how to make the best use of this. With her winning speech for the evening entitled 'Conspiracy Theory' Evelyn persuaded us that we were all bilingual at heart; Hilary gave Graham a roasting with her speech 'I did it my way' and Graham admitted that Hilary's description of his wayward life was all true. Chris encouraged us to get on our bikes with his speech 'The Anatomy of a Road Racing Bike'.

The speeches were evaluated by Jane, Helen and Pauline, with Helen voted as Best Evaluator for the evening. Tracy as General Evaluator summed up the evening and Grammarian Eric counted our um's and ah's and reported on our creative usage of language and who had resorted to 'arcane' methods. (DEBBIE)

10 April - An amazing day

The yearly focus of Chiltern Speakers is The International Speech Contest. This is where speakers from Windsor, Maidenhead, Marlow and Chiltern battle it out to win a place in the USA World Contest. Apart from lofty ambitions it's an inspirational event where you can hear well crafted speeches, learn from others and generally enjoy the company of likeminded folk. The Morning is organised into four speeches, a break for refreshments followed by a single target speech that's evaluated independently by four members.

Four International Speeches

The opening speech titled "Voice" by Ed Percival (Windsor) took us on his personal journey starting with the fragile "Exorcet of his childhood confidence", through 25 years of jumble, to finding "The Voice". We met the famous voice of the Simpson's, together with Brian Blessed and Paul McCartney. Ed closed with a powerful message. "Join the Great Journey- the Mighty Highway."

Sheila Hamilton-Andrews (Marlow) worked her speech around a question, "How heavy is a glass of water?" It' was interesting to see how such a simple prop gave form and weight to a message that is often ignored; lives full of clutter, missed goals and lost opportunities.

The third speech also opened with a question. "Is art the answer?" Ian Rees (Maidenhead) grappled with issues of the Soul. He intimated that we need Art for our imagination, concentration and contemplation. He closed with an illustration from his early married life when extended business trips were enlivened by receiving hand written letters from his young wife.

The last speech by Jacqui Hogan (Chiltern) again led with a question, "What if?" Just think about it next time you have road rage or Tesco rage. Why not take a leaf from John McCarthy who successfully managed his five year hostage by keeping control of his emotions.

Target Speech and four evaluations

Again this speech opened with a question "If not you, who?" and a call to action, "Listen to the voice within you." Karen Szulakowska led us through our responsibilities to ourselves, our families and friends and gave us solutions and pathways to follow. The four evaluators were Jacqui, Jan, Ian and Amanda.

The morning concluded with Prizes presented by Keith Clarke, our Area Governor.

First prize: The Area Evaluation Contest; Amanda Bouch.

First prize: The Area Speech Contest; Ian Rees

Thanks to our Chief Judge, Debbie Hunter and to Tracey Miranda, our President, who held the whole event together with novel audience warm up sessions. Thanks to Pauline Trew for refreshments. After the meeting closed many members and guests retired to our house for tea and coffee on the lawn. Really rather British. (JEREMY)

6 April - The Pale Blue Dot

We had a packed agenda for this meeting and plenty of excitement even before we started. We lost our Toastmaster - Chetan Bhatt - for the first 10 minutes but Joanna Ward stepped into his shoes with great aplomb and kept the meeting on track.

Robert Stuart led the Table Topics and asked members to comment on some difficult newspaper headlines. A tricky challenge but Tracy, Evelyne, Debbie, Stewart and Ron all acquitted themselves very well. The highlight of the Table Topics was when Robert issued his challenge and saw his victim's face drop so much that he relented and changed the newspaper headline.

We had 5 speeches because there is so much demand from members to make a speech - a great position for the Club to be in. Neil Chesters delivered his ice breaker and entertained us with a Scouser's view on finance - "robber" was of course one definition that Neil came up with. Neil's wit and storytelling skills came through very strongly in a very accomplished first speech. Neil won best speech and we look forward to many more.

Graham Parker then posed the question about the "pale blue dot" - a photograph of the Earth taken by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990 from a distance of 3.7bn miles from the Earth. Graham's message, like Carl Sagan's, is that it can be a very humbling experience viewing the Earth from such a distance - and that as it is the only inhabitable planet that we know about perhaps we should spend more time respecting it.

Jane Penson then used the potholes outside her house and her council's leaflets to challenge the meaningless business babble - "issues", "resource", "Bottom line" that inflicts our lives. We all sympathised with Jane's assertion that it is the power of stories that really engage and keep people's attention.

Chris Liveing took us in another direction with a short history lesson on the 1st Earl of Beaconsfield - Benjamin Disraeli. He posed the question that Disraeli was a political adventurer - motivated by ambition and power rather than by principled belief. But perhaps Disraeli's most significant achievement is how this outsider rose to become leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister.

Finally Brian Sanders brought his memories flooding back to the war and plight of child evacuees. It was great to hear the real experiences of someone who had been through that period and his reflection on the attitudes and mores of the time.

Tracy Miranda, Debbie Hunter, Phil Renshaw, Ron Symington and Mike Kavanagh delivered the evaluations to the speeches - with Phil judged the best evaluator of the evening. Jacqui Hogan, as general evaluator, reminded us that evaluating in the 3rd person stops the evaluation being a conversation with the speech giver and engages the whole room. By this time we had overstayed our welcome and Tracy concluded the evening by reminding us that Chiltern Speakers was hosting the Area International Speech contest on Saturday 10th April.

16 March - International Speech and Evaluation contest

One of the highlights of the Chiltern Speakers calendar is the annual international speech and evaluation contest. This year's competition was well attended and hotly contested. The first part of the contest was the international speech competition - contestants had to deliver an original 5-7minute speech on a topic of their choice. We had four experienced speakers step up to the challenge. Helen Elliott spoke effectively about the importance of a CV for today's competitive job market. Jim Moffat regaled us with his tale of successfully winning a spot in the You-Tube assembled symphony orchestra which led him to playing at Carnegie Hall and with the London Symphony Orchestra. Jeremy had us convinced us that the moonwalk was an elaborate hoax filmed all filmed at Pinewood studios. Jacqui alarmed us with her enraged outbursts but won us over as she sought to seek self-control.

Dressed for the occasion, Chris Liveing was our Contest Chair, flanked by Chief Judge Eric Elliott. Chris conducted the evening with great aplomb and kept the audience entertained during the breaks. In particular, he had the audience work together to weave a story between a given opening of 'I woke up this morning…' and the ending that went '…and that's how I ended up in casualty'. The audience rose to the occasion and hilarity ensued as the story unfolded. Told from multiple viewpoints we had several bizarre twists and turns as toastmasters put their imagination to good use. It was so good we had a second go, this time with the ending '…and that's how I ended up in court."

The second part of the evening was the evaluation contest. First we had a test speech - this was delivered by Richard Day of Aylesbury Speakers, who spoke about waterproofing boots. Richard used a multitude of props - polish, boots, kitchen towels - to effectively illustrate his points and we all learned a thing or two. The evaluators then had some time to prepare before returning one-by-one to deliver their evaluations while the judges listened out and scored them for analytical points, style and conclusion. Jacqui Hogan, Helen Elliott, Joanna Ward and Pauline Trew each took it in turn to present their viewpoint of the speech in their own styles.

Finally it was time to hear the winners. It was a double win for Jacqui Hogan who took home the silverware for both her inspiring speech and inspired evaluation. Jim Moffat was runner up in the speech contest, while Helen Elliott was runner-up in the evaluation contest. All-in-all, a great evening of public speaking. (TRACY)

2 March - Two birds with one stone

Our first meeting of March had Hilary aptly taking the helm as Toastmaster. Bogusia was the TableTopics Master and picked idioms as our theme. Speaking off-the-cuff for two minutes, Brian got to 'pull someone's leg' and I tried to get through it 'without a hitch'. Jim recounted how his wife once 'got in his hair' while Chris mused on his experiences using 'carrot and stick' methods while dealing with his children. Jacqui took us back in time to the far east to portray the origins of 'kill two birds with one stone'. Her vivid description of the great shooter taking out two hummingbirds at once turned out to be a complete fabrication, but still won her best tabletopic of the evening.

We got to know two of our newer members a lot better as they delivered their icebreaker speeches. Chris proved appearances can be deceptive as she revealed that behind her ordinary exterior was a 'seething mass of creativity'! She went onto tell us about her passion for art. Entitled 'The Natural Thread' Sue's speech tied in her forefathers' farm in Cheshire with her buying a new camera. The link was Sue's love for the outdoors and nature which she conveyed as she talked about various parts of her life - the most entertaining of which were the well named lambs 'Mint sauce' and 'Lamb chop'.

Robert was in fine storytelling form as he animatedly related the tale of Fingal the giant and Finn McCool. Phil was awarded best speech of the night for his speech in which he challenged the audience to ask 'Why don't I have a coach ?'. In his speech Phil extolled the virtues of having someone to listen and ask us all the right questions.

There is more to the General Evaluator's role than just speaking. Graham discovered this as he took on the role for the first time and had a go at dealing with when things don't quite go to plan. He dealt with the mishaps with great humour and went onto share lots of useful feedback on the evening as a whole. Our grammarian Chetan told us about the myriad instances the word of the day - 'myriad' was used. Chetan also sparked debate as he questioned the use of 'unsolvable' versus 'insoluble'. The debate continued as we headed to the pub for some socializing as we too killed two birds with one stone. (TRACY)

16 February - Evaluation Workshop

This meeting was a special one - an evening dedicated to mastering the art of evaluation. A good evaluation inspires speakers to develop and helps improve their speaking ability. This workshop was developed as several members had expressed an interest in being able to improve their ability to give effective evaluations.

We had three groups of evaluators and three speakers. Each group was assigned one of the speeches to evaluate. With the help of our mentors each group member had to prepare and deliver a two minute evaluation of the speech

Debbie kicked things off with a very useful educational speech on 'How To Evaluate'. In it she shared the acronym P.I.E. which stands for Praise, Improve and Encourage and gave us useful outline for structuring our evaluations.

The first group was mentored by Helen. They listened to Jacqui Hogan deliver a speech based around her experiences in the social networking arena. And just for good measure, in between extolling the virtues of connecting online, Jacqui snuck in a politically charged rant. Ben, Brian and Jeremy who were evaluating Jacqui stepped up to the challenge. Each dealt with the issue in their own style, but tactfully and effectively. Ben also caught onto specific technical jargon used in the speech.

The second group, mentored by Debbie, got to listen to Louise Heather deliver her speech entitled 'Bumping Your Head'. This was a speech all about continuous improvement and how to apply different techniques to improving every aspect of our lives. You would never have guessed some members of this group were delivering evaluations for the first time as once again we had some very structured and effective evaluations. Graham even delivered his with no notes and neatly tied off his evaluation suggesting Louise use her own advice to continuously improve her speaking ability.

The third group was enthralled by Mike's storytelling. Mike wove a tale of a young guitarist finding the perfect guitar - this turned out to be a true tale in the life of classical guitarist Andres Segovia. Mentored by Jacqui, each member in this group took it in turns to give their verdict on the speech- with a lot of emphasis on the body language. It was interesting to hear the different interpretations based on individual's opinions each expressed well using the P.I.E. structure.

After each group member spoke, the evaluators were evaluated. Each group mentor stepped up and showed us how it was done as they delivered feedback praising the virtues and offering up suggestions for further improvement. All in all, it was a great evening of learning focused on improving our ability to give feedback. It was well timed with the evaluation competition just a month away there were many worthy competitors on the night. (TRACY)

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