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‘…And I
still don’t know what that elephant in the room is all about’ was the General
Evaluator's conclusion to the Corrib Toastmasters meeting on Tuesday 8th March, 2016 - at the Maldron
Hotel in Oranmore, Co. Galway - having begun with a comment on an atmosphere of giddiness
on the night. She was to find out.
The giddy
tone may have been set when the Toastmaster of the night invited members to attend his
wedding celebration. He is to marry the man who is already his civil partner.
This time last year he was working on a jigsaw of maps on the kitchen floor in
preparation to for Vote Yes in Co.Mayo in the campaign to legalise marriage for all in the Irish Constitution that was passed and came into law at the end of 2015.
The meeting
proper having begun: the first speech made a cogent case for legalising
medicinal marijuana. The liveliness was brought to earth as the speaker
described the far more dangerous drugs and two year waiting list for spinal
pain relief injections involved in managing personal chronic pain. Her
concluding hope that by the time medicinal marijuana is legalised she will no
longer need it was upbeat.
From
euphoria – the grammarian’s word of the evening that each speaker is invited to
use – to the bread the next speaker has
discovered it’s a pleasure to bake. Personal Oscars were awarded during the third speech. His Stage Five speech would be evaluated in relation to use of body
language and expression. No question about able use of facial expression when
this speaker taunted the Mayo team followers with his Oscar for the Galway team
winning thrice in a row – glee and humour clear in a winning smile and
sparkling eyes. His final winner is a Nun whose seventy-fourth he recently
attended. In her ‘retirement’ she teaches mindfulness to people recovering from
addiction.
‘I thank God
that I have always had the gift of a great deal of energy’ the final speaker,
working on an advanced speaking programme, began. He had needed it in the early
in his married life while working in Australia on a major construction project.
He broke his leg, his brand new machinery, worth around a hundred thousand,
became bogged in a swamp as did the recovery efforts and vehicles. Three days
of dogged persistence got it out. Exhausted he got home, only to discover that
a close family member was critically ill in his hospital. The speech’s
evaluator summed it up: ‘Resilience best describes the underlying theme of this
speech’.
Seamus
Heaney’s Mid-Term Break was the end poem read with exceptionally beautiful
pacing. The reader contributed a welcome reflective pause before the final
reports and evaluation asking about the elephant at back of the room. It may
well accompany the Corrib Toastmasters in the St. Patrick’s Day Galway parade. Who’ll
walk with the club? How can you miss that?
Note. Corrib
Toastmasters can be found at www.corrib.toastmastersclub.org
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