With the club President’s election taking some of the time at this meeting, our final Toastmasters session of the year was a little different.  

Toastmaster Qaya warmed us up by asking us all to share what we each value as members of Tunbridge Wells Speakers Club. There was a great deal of overlap in the responses with characteristics like friendly, connected, community focused, safe, fearless, a shared learning agenda, and positive energy shared around the virtual table.   

Our prepared speeches came from Danielle and Steve. Danielle’s speech entitled The Accidental Guardian Angel was a wonderful and inspiring story of how she was in the right place at the right time to save a passer-by’s life. The man had fallen ill in the street and Danielle sprang into action, identifying the issue as a stroke. Her quick, heroic action saved a life. Well done Danielle!

Steve spoke about the challenge and leadership choices in integrating foresight – making sense of uncertain future factors – into change management to enable better change outcomes. Tonderai and Imogen were our evaluators and both delivered insightful and encouraging evaluations on Danielle and Steve’s speeches respectively.

Our Topicsmaster this week was Michael who asked our Table Topics participants to talk about the time they met someone famous. In yet another tied finish, Ian, who spoke about the time he met Postman Pat at Wimbledon, and Imogen, who told us about a near diving accident that was prevented in the nick of time by Donald Trump, were joint Champions.

Grammarian Chris chose 'whiffler' as the Word of the Day which is defined as, a person who frequently shifts opinions, attitudes, interests; a person who is vacillating or evasive in an argument (dictionary.com). No sign of any whifflers at this meeting!

Well done to everyone else who took on a role; Ian as Sergeant at Arms / Zoomaster, Kirsty as Timekeeper, Santiago as Topics Evaluator, Islay as General Evaluator, and for the final time as President, Chris.