A new member to begin the club’s new year

Today we welcomed Sandy into the club. Sandy has visited three meetings and decided she can improve her speaking skills by joining us – even though she already speaks well. Terrific!

Also, today, Geoff brought Ashis as a visitor to the meeting. Ashis also is already a confident speaker, and he appeared to enjoy the opportunity to answer a Table Topics question and join in generally.

Leona gave us ‘Don’t Panic’ as the Word(s) of the Day, and set us all laughing with her few-word précis of the book ‘Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy’ in which that is apparently a recurring phrase.

‘Don’t panic’ was a very appropriate choice for today’s meeting because the agenda was sent a bit cockeyed by two members having to be absent unexpectedly, so there was no first speech. Several of us found opportunities to include ‘Don’t panic’ in our Table Topics answers or in speaking while filling our roles for the meeting.

Sandy creatively gave us a sequence of Table Topics leading from one to the next, which amply filled in the missing time. She challenged us to reveal our thoughts on such topics as: ‘White lies – good or bad?’, ‘Do we have too many public holidays?’, ‘The most enjoyable feasting meal you have had’, ‘Some useful energy-saving tips’, ‘What makes your holidays enjoyable?’, ‘Tell us your image of the future’, ‘How do you picture Utopia?’ and ‘Give us a thoroughly good news bulletin’.

Everyone responded with interesting and sometimes amusing tales, and everyone fitted their answer within a 2-minute timeslot. This is important practice for Table Topics contests, where you are disqualified if your answer is too short (less than 1 minute) or too long (more than 2.5 minutes).

And some of the tales? Dominic related how his mother in Northern  Ireland, living alone, and having frugal habits that included boiling her breakfast egg in a soup tin to save water and power, would produce wonderfully enjoyable feasts for an influx of eight family adults at Christmas, where the turkey would often be too big for the oven!
Ashis outlined a range of things he enjoys about holidays, depending on how much time is available. A key feature seemed to be absence of all e-devices! Is that possible these days?
Geoff told us the future holds 2000 years of dark ages, after humans have used up all the Earth’s resources, but he gave us hope for the time beyond that when humans would gradually flourish once again.
Leona came out strongly against white lies.
Ianon thinks Australia has enough public holidays, and told us that Malaysia has even more! In a second Table Topic, Ianon later described a Utopia where everyone respects everyone else’s views and property, and there is peace. :-)

Speech 2 this week was from a manual leading towards an Advanced Bronze award. The manual is called ‘Communicating on Television’. For today, Ann and Dominic simulated a 7-minute chat show. Dominic introduced Ann as ‘Robin Hood, who speaks for more trees’. You can guess the topic of Ann’s chat. Dominic, as interviewer, questioned her on optimum tree size in Canberra’s increasingly dense housing areas, and asked why grow more trees when we can’t burn wood? In his evaluation, Geoff said he thought Ann would have been convincing in a real chat show. However, I think she would definitely ‘panic’ in a real studio without the friendly club members as ‘studio audience’!

The meeting finished on time, with all business completed. Next meeting is on 19 July.