February 7th, 2016 saw our 23rd meeting with the Word of the Day being Specific!. Toastmaster Sharon O'Neill presided as Toastmaster for the evening and introduced two speeches:
Mary Murphy gave her CC2 speech - Organise your Speech - with the subject of "The House that Eileen Built" a fascinating story of Eileen Gray who built a house on the Cote d'Azure in the 1920's. There is a good article in the Guardian you might like to read. Mary's speech was well evaluated by Peter Neville.
This was followed by an advanced speech from our president, Moira O'Brien, from the Entertaining Speaker" manual, number 2 - Resources for Entertainment - entitled "An Englishman, a Scotsman, and an Irishman". This speech was evaluated by Sharon O'Neil, who gave an excellent evaluation using the formula from Freddie Daniells - something that, as a club, we endorse as the best way to evaluate speeches.
Matt Murphy treated us to an entertaining Table Topics session - the most popular subject of which was about the "Dump your Lover Day". Our General Evaluator, Mary Walsh, however, did point out that allowing multiple responses to topics was no longer impromptu speaking, something we will endeavour to improve in future meetings. Congratulations go to our guest, Tom O'Connor, who was adjudged to have given the best response to a topic.
Mary Walsh was assisted by timekeeper Claire O'Leary, Grammarian Christine Murphy and Sergeant at Arms Peter Neville.