July has been a really sweltering month – just right for ice-cream and cold drinks down by the beach.

It has been a hot month at Toastmasters also with plenty going on.

Annual Dinner

We started the month off with our Annual Dinner at the Bickley Manor Hotel, which is a delightful location.

Drinks and chat were followed by a delicious three-course dinner during which we were entertained by some interesting impromptu speeches led with Gallic charm by our Table Topics Master, Alain Culos.

Our After-Dinner speech was given by Daniel Broadhead, a member of Excalibur Advanced Speakers Club and Immediate Past President of Area L9. He is also a Broker, keen chess player and keen swimmer, so we were very fortunate that he was able to take time off from his busy schedule to be with us for the evening.

He entertained us with tales of a wedding that he had recently attended, where he had been the speaker. He also told us how Toastmasters had opened up doors for him to speak at other venues and encouraged us to continue in our Toastmaster journey.

The dinner was then finished with an official handover from the current President, Ian Brett, to the Incoming President, Paul Andreas who then gave a short speech.

A big thank you goes to all those who helped to organise a wonderful evening, including Julie Ward, Dave Henson, Ian Brett and Richard Murray, who was our Facilitator for the evening.

First Meeting of the Year at Ripley on 21 July

New Procedures following MOT

On May 5th we held a “Moments of Truth” (MOT) Meeting when members were given an opportunity to tell the Committee of improvements they would like the club to adopt.

As a result we have set up a “Welcome Table” near the front door, where we can welcome guests and give them a “Welcome Pack”.

It had been suggested that we should wear Name Badges so a vote was taken on it and it was agreed.

We welcomed two new members into the club – Margot and Jenny.

Alex Clark was the TMOD for the first time and did an excellent job.

Susan Rayner gave an inspirational speech, called “Love Your Neighbour”, speech # 10 from the Competent Communicator Manual.

John Cross gave an entertaining speech about foxes, #7 from Competent Communicator and Richard Murray gave an informative speech, titled, “The Right Decision” about how to make good decisions.

Tony Smith was our Table Topics Master and came up with some very entertaining questions. Matthew Allen won Table Topics with an entertaining talk about how to chat up girls at the bus stop.

Paul Lynch won Best Evaluator and Richard Murray won Best Speaker.

Date of Club Contest was announced as the 1 September