Debut for Mark...

IT WAS Mark Harrison’s first time chairing the meeting of the Loughborough Charnwood Speakers’ Club.

He had clearly learned from the training we’d had on chairmanship and took charge with confidence and a good clear voice.

He explained the programme for the evening and led a warm up session to get us into the swing of the evening.

This is an impromptu one minute topic starting from one word which the next speaker takes over from the last word at the end of one minute. Mark had his ongoing extension in his mind so chose the word extension as a starter. This was followed by budget, already and category.

Two new members, Joe Richardson and Angus Harriman then completed their maiden speech which aims to tell us more about themselves.

Joe was keen on health and fitness which he said had improved his life style and given him confidence. Having a healthy diet improved his energy levels and his self image.

Angus gave some consideration to what he would talk about and spoke about how he would want to appear to others and gave many examples of what he thought would be proper behaviour, or not, with some humour.

Frank Rawson has reached assignment number five in the speakers guide which covers use of voice. As an engineer Frank favours subjects that he feels comfortable with and which are often very educational.

He told us about how starting a small business several years ago he needed to find customers without the help of the internet and mobile phones which makes it so much easier in today’s technical environment.

Getting a stand at the Inter Plas exhibition in Birmingham was both tiring and had elements of boredom which anyone who has ever manned a stand at an exhibition can attest to.

Filling display cabinets with products and getting leaflets printed was costly for someone starting out but at the end of the three days he had a great many enquiries to follow up and all that was left was the hard and tiring work of dismantling the stand and making his way home.

After a well earned interval, the evening continued with evaluations of the speeches and a topic session in which everyone took part. Using the mnemonic Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain Patricia Baker gave each speaker one of the colours of the rainbow to speak about.

This was won by David Hopkins who has reached the National competitions in the past yet said he had never received the topics award at club level. We were all surprised at this revelation as David has been a member of the club for several years. David spoke for almost three minutes on the colour orange. He described an orange in great detail with some amazing word pictures which made us all taste the citric flavour and smell the tangy zest as he made the first cut.

We would still like to see new visitors to the club which is held at John Storer House on the second and fourth Tuesday of the month. Next meeting is on November 28, at 7.15pm

For more information go to www. loughboroughspeakers.org.uk