A Wonderful Bouquet

This week's meeting was like a bouquet bursting with blooms of all kinds and colours. Numerous smallish speeches on an array of celebrities enabled those who, like me, know a lot about a little to be enthralled by things like Elizabeth's going up a tree a princess and going down a queen. In a tutorial on speech structure, which likened hearing a speech to inspecting a house, Jannene whetted our appetites by drawing on popular culture, in particular, our beloved Alice's exchange with the Cheshire Cat about knowing where one wants to go. This is an extremely effective device. We got to drool, yet again, over Colin Firth - thanks Rex; I'm glad you know what women want. The comments of outside assessor Don Mansfield highlighted slightly different speech elements and featured insights about members that we may not appreciate are key strengths because they are so familiar to us - sometimes you don't see the forest for the trees. I had the opportunity to refresh my skills at chairing a meeting, even though I forgot the Vote of Thanks (and so did everyone else), and had a last-minute impromptu practice, which was very welcome. And best of all, I saw people pushing themselves beyond their previous successes, and succeeding. Campbell's speech, for instance, reflected a capacity for research gained, perhaps, from writing his 10-minute Carpe Diem speech. Well done everyone. Now remember that special challenge I threw down at the beginning of the meeting . . . .