Finally we got to see Daniel Komolafe in action as our Toastmaster for the evening, and a fine job he did too, making everyone feel welcome and at ease and organising the sequence of speeches and evaluation confidently.

In the prepared speeches, there was quite a bit of reminiscing … but fair to say, no nostalgia.

Neil Pettigrew gave a speech on what it was like to witness the heyday of the National Front – not that many of us even remember them … and not fondly! Dan New – our VP Membership, revealed that despite his serene demeanour these days he was something of a troublemaker when he was little. And David Hampton talked about the stress of hosting an Ofsted inspection. Congratulations to Dan for picking up the Best Speech award.

Edna Petzen arranged a challenging but very entertaining set of Table Topics loosely themed around “November” – congratulations to Ruben Martins for his deadpan comparison of British weather with the rather more pleasant climate of his native Portugal, which entertained us as much as it made us jealous. Best Table Topic of the night to Ruben.

We were also delighted to congratulate Andrew Vaughan on reaching his Level 1 in Pathways, and look forward to many more speeches from him

Congratulations to Carol Mae Whittick who, having swept the board in our club Humorous Speech and Table Topics competitions in September, went on to win the Area Final for Table Topics.

Fingers crossed for the Division Final in November!

Our President, Saadia Alege, sprung a few surprises tonight.

Why were Past Presidents Dave Henson and Martin Langdon there?  Plus other well-liked ex-members, David Wilson and Bashiru Mohammed (aka Bash).  And was that really Debbie Williams, the District Director, in the audience?  And why were there only two speeches instead of the normal three?  And why was the General Evaluator slot vacant?

Some subterfuge was clearly going on, and we didn’t have to wait long for all to be revealed, as Saadia opened the meeting by explaining that it was all part of a carefully-planned surprise to celebrate David Hampton reaching a major milestone – 25 years as a member of Toastmasters this month.

So it was a fairly festive atmosphere, helped by a wonderful debut in the Toastmaster role from Edna Petzen, setting an upbeat tone and guiding us expertly through proceedings, plus great speeches from Daniel Komolafe on the Secret of Confidence (coming from someone who’s certainly not lacking that area) and Andrew Vaughan on The Psychology of the Ford Fiesta (which brought a smile to the faces of Ford veterans David Wilson and David Hampton).

Towards the end, Debbie presented David with a plaque to commemorate his anniversary and asked David to reflect on why on earth he was still a member – so that’s what happened to the third speech slot – and the gist of the answer was that Toastmasters has done so much for his career that he feels the need to keep coming to repay the club as best he can.

Which just left us with the General Evaluator … step forward Dave Henson to give his thoughts on a memorable evening, thanks to the efforts of  Saadia and last year’s President, Kieran Mangan.

So it seemed like a good time to pose for a group photo… here we are