Dave Black called the meeting to order at 18.35. The President Andrew Timberlake welcomed everyone and presented the Toastmaster Agnes Lutukai, who proposed the Loyal Toast.
Speeches
There were seven excellent speeches which retained our concentration for the night as they ranged from a fascinating Ice breaker, through two very different readings, to entertaining and motivational but educational speeches.
Clinton Jacobs – “The One Thing You Need To Know”
Clinton fascinated us by describing the one universal thing you need to know to succeed at leadership, management and to have sustained individual success.
In the case of great leaders they know what their people need at any one time and present this as a constant motivational message.
Great Managers have the ability to turn talent into performance by gathering around them people with a range of different unique strengths and concentrating on the value of these strengths, not on their weaknesses.
And for us as individuals to achieve sustained success is simple, discover what you don’t like doing and stop doing it!
Monica Oosthuizen “The Benefits Of Being A Taxi Driver”
Monica advocated that if you were finding the current traffic a nightmare, aggravated by all the road works and the recent torrential rains which precipitated a lack of pointsmen, a realistic solution was to become a taxi driver.
Taxi drivers were above (and had solutions) for all these problems. Taxi drivers do not have to obey the rules of the road, they can drive at whatever speed they choose, through red robots, on the pavement etc. etc. They foster a relaxed driving attitude at all times, one hand on the wheel, the other with their elbow on the window.
She concluded by urging us all to think seriously about the fact that we can’t beat them so why don’t we join them.
Coralie Rutherford “Handsome Man”
Coralie read the chapter, from the No 1 Woman’s Detective, Agency entitled Handsome Man, where Mma Ramotswe proves her client’s husband is a womaniser by setting the husband up to be photographed while he is giving Mma Ramotswe an enthusiastic kiss!
Erich Viedge “She will not admit it”
Erich told the story of his maid who woke him at 3.00 am one morning saying she was in too much pain to come to work, a major trauma in the Viedge household, as who would fetch their son from school?
The only result of a long drive and a full day of waiting at hospital – one packet of paracetamol.
The maid struggled on in pain for a few days but eventually Erich was forced to spend a day outwitting hospital staff, which, to his wife’s total disbelief, resulted in the maid actually being admitted into the Johannesburg General, with a drip attached to her body! The admission was followed by an operation for gall stones and the return of the Viedge household to normal.
Emma Dougherty “Pleased to Meet You”
Emma creatively used the letters of her name to introduce her to us all.
The E for Emma stood for education, which Emma had pursued with creativity around the world. Finishing her schooling in Potchefstroom, studying communication at Bond University, then, in Australia, a Master of Business.
Then M for love of marketing which lead Emma to open, with a partner, her own sales training and image consulting company.
The second M stood for music a great love of her life.
Finally A was for her admiration of Coco Chanel a woman who not only built a fashion empire but was way ahead of her time with respect to women’s rights.
Kirsten Long “Great Expectations”
Kirsten poked fun at the pros and cons of great expectations when looked at from different viewpoints. Starting with her totally unexpected third pregnancy.
She illustrated how, if we expect too much, we are often disappointed or let down as happened with some of tonight’s speakers or a movie over which everyone raves. With respect to food perhaps we should not expect too much when travelling especially that a food of one country will match our expectations when cooked in another.
She closed with illustrating how two people can have totally different expectations as in the case of Woody Allan and his then current wife, where for Woody sex 3- 4 times a week was hardly at all and for his wife too often!
Barbara Poultney A Reading From “The Mission Song” John Le Carre
A fascinating scenario, Barbara read from a chair with a second empty chair set to her side. She was specifically required not to look at the audience during this monologue.
The reading described the meal eaten and the restaurant companions of a young man from the Congo, of mixed parentage. While eating he tried to read from “Much Ado About Nothing” but was prevented from this by the dominance of a woman in a group of 6 diners who voiced her opinion very loudly on every matter under the sun.
That is until a diner from the only other occupied table stood up and addressed the table stating that he had come to enjoy a meal and read his Telegraph and not be deluged by dialogue after which he paid for his meal and left.
This left our hero reflecting on his less than satisfactory behaviour when his wife informed him that business would prevent her enjoying the 5th wedding anniversary dinner he planned to cook. He consigned the food to the dirt bin before taking himself and his book to the restaurant.
Time Keeper
Throughout the evening, despite a lack of lights, Karen Geyser, ably assisted by Sue-Anne Joe was an effective and efficient timekeeper.
Evaluations
Barbara Poultney ably chaired the evaluation session in which Paul evaluated Clinton’s speech, Andrew Monica’s speech, Barbara Coralie’s Speech, Danie Erich’s speech, Monica Emma’s speech, Erich Kirsten’s speech and Kirsten Barbara’s speech.
All the evaluations kept within the required time constraints.
Raffle
Cheryl bought the last ticket and won the raffle despite much shaking up of tickets!
On a Point and Closure
Andrew thanked everyone for contributing to this “whirlwind meeting” where despite our props being locked away and many changes to the programme, the objective to have an excellent Speakathon which provided effective evaluations had been achieved. He encouraged all the guests to visit us again at the next meeting on 6 April.
Members were reminded to diarise the Area Contest on 6 April, the Division Contest on 7 May and Maxicon in Cape Town on 16 and 17 May.
The Club AGM was scheduled for 20 May.
Forgiveness Please
The writer begs forgiveness in advance for any errors especially with the speeches, she was so fascinated listening that occasionally her fingers made a typing error which she could not decipher!
