Boaters Toastmasters meeting 722
Meeting report by Frank Ansell, Club President.
This was the last Boaters Toastmasters meeting for 2013 held on Friday 13 2013.
David Cooper was Toastmaster of the Day and chose the theme ‘So this is Christmas’ for the
meeting. Prior to the meeting, I had suggested the theme be ‘Friday the Thirteenth’ but (perhaps
unsurprisingly) Christmas was the more popular choice.
The Grammarian for the meeting was me, Frank Ansell. I decided the word of the day would
be ‘SHOUT’ and I encouraged everyone to pay attention to voice projection, and speaking loudly
enough to be heard. Toastmaster David took up my suggestion, shouting ‘Thanks Frank!’ at me as I
sat down.
Our first speaker was Rachel Walton, with her speech ‘Landscapes of Waste’. Rachel has studied
landscape architecture and presented a breath taking slide show of landscapes including landfills,
ship demolition yards, and runoff from mining activities. Rachel’s objective was to use this powerful
photography to encourage us to think about where our waste ends up and the potential impacts on
the environment.
The second speaker for the meeting was David Cooper, who by a strange twist of events managed
to score a speaking slot at his own meeting. David shared some stories about events taking place
in parts of the developing world, in particular countries troubled by war. He reminded us that
Christmas is about much more than giving and receiving presents, and that we must be grateful for
the things that we have.
Our third speaker was David Clarkson, presenting an outright hilarious speech involving a priest, a
nun and a donkey. This story began with Father Joe’s pet donkey winning a race, resulting in the
newspaper headline ‘Priest’s ass out in front’. Unamused, Father Joe’s local bishop requested that
he get rid of the donkey, whereupon the tone of this speech began to go rapidly downhill with the
next day’s newspaper headline ‘Bishop scratches priest’s ass’. Further headlines included ‘Nun sells
her ass for $10’, ‘Nun’s ass wild and free’ and so on. We were all rolling on the floor with laughter by
the time David had finished.
After a short coffee break Geoff Robinson led the Table Topics session. Geoff had prepared some
Christmas themed Table Topics.
Helen McLeod was asked to Role-play Santa and explain to the audience whether adults would be
receiving any presents from Santa this year.
Sandra Smith explained how Santa will be delivering presents this year, despite extensive
earthquake damage to chimneys in Christchurch.
Alannah Vickery was asked to tell us about the health and fitness of Santa’s reindeer. Alannah
instead told us that she didn’t believe in Santa ever since she accidentally pulled off Santa’s beard at
a shopping mall when she was a child. We’re an unruly bunch in Boaters, aren’t we?
Ian Thornton was our token elf and told us about how he would be spending his two weeks’ holiday
before he goes back to work making toys for next Christmas.
Clare Ruru told us about some presents that she wished she’d receive but never did. Her husband
(Brent) was sitting in the front row so presumably this was prearranged between Geoff and Clare to
dump some guilt on poor Brent.
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