1st October 2008

By Franco Vaccaro

Bertie Ekperigin, President pro tempore was in her smartest uniform to mind the ship while Gray was away. She told how she’d surprised herself on how far she’d come in two short years, to be now wearing the captain’s medallion around her neck.

From one president to (Immediately-Past) another, Sonia Aste took the helm of her beloved “Best Club in the World” (as voted by its members) and steered us through the high seas, and onto the Port, on time. Sue Kennedy was minding the clock, and reminded us that “time and tide wait for no man”. “Cute” (as voted by Sonia) Andrew Dias minded our “verbal non-words” and asked us to replace these with pauses.

Prepared Speeches show cased two cracking ice-breakers: one from Heidi Ashley-Hacker, who just joined last week and introduced us to the threes sides of her life; and Jim Marshall-Andrew who revealed the nut within his nutshell, which got cracked by a flying golf ball. OUCH! John Craddock re-presented his brilliantly acted toff-cum-cockney-cum-toff contest speech in its new Corinthians-winning format (besta-luk John for d’area!). Dorothea seduced us with her stats, before warning about their abuse in the shadow of truth.

Evaluations had Andrew Klimaytys ticking all of Heidi’s boxes, which struck him with fear at the thought of “H” being hot on his trail. Contest Champion, Jim McCluskey injected large doses of humour in his evaluation of (the other) Jim’s speech, proving why he was a winner with his club. Pamela Smith had the tough job of evaluating John’s contest rehearsal and gave him some kernels of sage advice. Pilar Sibbick described Dorothea’s presentation as efficient and academic, and took pleasure in Dorothea’s deft handling of Jim Mc’s cunning question, seeing it off with a brilliant text book answer.

Table Topics was chaired by that treasured, and most treasurable of treasures, Jenny Betts, who invited discussion and debate on the decrepit state of the economy. Eight quick-thinking speakers took it in turn to ponder and pontificate on: If I were Prime Minister (Franco); money-saving tips (new member Robert Yuen), throwing a redundancy party (Jim M-A), cashing-in investments (Tony), giving-up spending (Jeremy); saver or spender be (Rees), dealing with redundancy (Guy); credit crunch advice for a five-year old (Pilar).
Claudia Cronjaeger gave her usual observant, funny and friendly feedback to her subjects. Honourable New Yorker, Paulino Carroll, the man who never sleeps, did a terrific big-apple evaluation.

Awards to Jim for Evaluation, Jeremy for Topics and John for Speech.

Reminder to all to support Jim and Celia at Area 29 competition on Monday 6th at Trojan Speakers, Ealing; and John Craddock at Area 06 on Monday 13th October.