An Evening - by Ian Harrison

The great thing about Athenians is that we always have a good time. As usual masses of encouragement for those that needed it and light "leg pulling" for those who also needed it!

The meeting was opened by our dependable President Paul Carrol who welcomed the 7 new guests. Our fame spreads! Paul then handed over to the Chairman of the evening, Mahin Driskill, who introduced the Timekeeper, David Lofthouse who ran us through the timing and light signals , and me the Grammarian (so if there is a focus on this aspect of the meeting you will know why). The word I introduced for the evening was "conundrum" which could be used in any context when relating to "a riddle or hard question, especially one with a pun in the answer."

For the first part of the evening Olivia Jeremias was the Topics Master and made an excellent job of selection, not only of her topics but also of the people to deliver them. And you didn't even have to have eye contact, did you Simone?
Michael Foti evaluated the topics and Mahin took us into the break.
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For the second part of the evening Kate Jacobson was her usual warm and welcoming self introducing the Prepared Speeches from
Gary Lilburn, John Tomsky, Sally Young and Jane Riddell.

The evaluators for the Speeches were
Antoine Bassila for Gary
Leigh Street for John
Jenny Fall for Sally
Gabriella Vecchio for Jane

As the Grammarian I was pleased to see the word conundrum used and also felt that we had some wonderful vocabulary and powerful phrases which were rich and thought provoking.

Owen set the scene with his "how much of the original you is still left" and on a similar vein Paul King followed with "I am not the person I was 20 years ago."
Adam whose "follicles will open up again" continued with "beyond the pale,"
Gary with "desired state of mind" and "subconsciously believing something will happen," Jane with "wouldn't it be wonderful to give a little????."
The great one for me was from "el presidente" Paul Carrol "nothing more noble than the humble black cab."

Kylie Simmons did a great job of Evaluating the evening and giving us some tips on how we could improve.

Paul announced the awards and congratulated :-

The Best Evaluator ---- Leigh Street
The Best Speaker ---- John Tomsky
The Best Table Topics ---- Paul Carrol

Eat the frog, kill the snake - if it makes you feel good !
I would sooner work on my next speech.

Don't forget if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well See you next time - Ian

What a wonderful evening packed with energy and excitement and for those of you, who missed the meeting, you really missed a treat. But seeing that am a nice guy let me share with you some of the highlights of the evening.

We had Shaun Louw as our Chairman ? Ladies and Gentlemen this is a man who has greatly improved his speaking skills. He kicked start the meeting with a personal touch and unique style. While introducing other functionary roles Shaun attempted to introduce them using their astrological signs of the Zodiac. This was his chosen theme for the night. I said, attempted because he got many of them wrong, which got everyone laughing. Great idea Shaun, it worked like a charm!

Next drama of the night was Calum Coburn our Topics Master ? Calum as a very distinctive style, which we've all grown to love at Athenians. He's got a very confident and professional manner about everything he does and his topics were no exception. It was tailored around the theme of, "Motivation"! Believe me after that session everyone was truly motivated with laughter. Who wouldn't with topics on Sex, Power, Thinking minds and Love just to mention a few? The audience wanted more and we eventually ended up with 12 table topic speakers on the night.

It just would not be a great meeting with out Rod Sloane's humor but this time he was dishing it out as our TimeKeeper for the night. It was very nice to see an experience toastmaster take on a role that was normally reserved for newer members. This is a classical case of leading by example - Thank you Rod for taking the first step; hopefully other experienced members will follow suit. It is never an easy task trying to make the timekeeper role more interesting but Rod certainly showed us the way by telling a story, which was relevant to Time. He made it very witty and funny.

Other highlights for the day was the word of the day (HENPECKED)! Introduced by our Grammarian for the evening Olivia Jeremias. And our respective winners, Paul King for a very insightful speech, Garry Lilburn who won the best table topic and the best evaluator, evaluating Paul's speech. Well done Garry Lilburn. We would love to see you more often at the Club and you can clearly see why. Apart from that all other functionary roles were delivered to the normal Athenians Standards.

This is I Tosin Ogunnusi signing out till our next meeting.

Always remember to live with passion!

Love & Light to all!