Our Toastmaster Santiago opened the meeting by asking attendees to remember their childhood games as the warm-up. He reminded us that sometimes we all need to ‘bring your inner child.’ 

The three prepared speeches were given by Charlotte, Marie, and Chris. Charlotte’s speech entitled ‘Feel the fear and do it anyway’ was an encouragement to us to be wary of a risk averse upbringing and embrace your fear for greater reward. Marie gave a typically insightful speech about the experience of being in the mass-media spotlight, and encouraging us not to ‘feed the (media) machine’. Chris’s speech, ‘How to cure your mind from going blank during table topics’ was an educational speech full of strategies and tactics about delivering better impromptu speeches. This evening’s evaluations were given by Craig, Simon, and Ron.  

Topicsmaster Rich posed a range of well-known quotes to challenge Table Topics participants’ creativity. In the final analysis our guest, Area Director Serena, won the accolade of Table Topics Champion after explaining that you might indeed want to keep your enemies as close as your friends.   

Grammarian Kirsty chose 'hyperbole' as a focus for the day which is defined by collinsdictionary.com as, a deliberate exaggeration used for effect. There was plenty of exaggeration throughout the meeting, most to good effect.  

Of particular note during the evening was Chris accidentally closing down of the Zoom room, mid-meeting …… cutting his wife off in the middle of her Table Topics evaluation! They say timing is everything!