Aminat was on Zoom Master and SAA duty concisely relaying the housekeeping and meeting rules before handing over to me to give the President's address.

This week I had the privilege of welcoming a new member to the club, Rupa who made the wise decision to join the crew of Croydon Communicators and begin her voyage to becoming the speaker and leader she wants to be!

Control of the meeting passed to our Toastmaster for the evening Loreen, to steer us through the choppy waters of the meeting agenda.
Loreen had some great opening remarks prepared about public speaking, how at Toastmasters we are learning to 'own the room' before moving on to explain the evening's programme and the theme of the meeting which was 'protests'.

Sandra took the stage to explain her Timekeeper role - two things to note, first Sandra's choice of phrase to impress on everyone in the meeting the importance of timekeeping "The bad thing is time flies; the good thing is that you are the pilot!".
Secondly, the amazing selection of dynamic colourful virtual background images used to signal timing. Such striking visuals would surely not be missed by our speakers, check them out below:

Our grammarian Susan was next to take the stage, and told us that she would be looking for not only good phrases, but inspiring phrases, and encouraged us all to use the word-of-the-day 'savvy' (no, not the Captain Jack Sparrow version!)

Our warm up session was run by Pam who was quick off the mark by immediately dropping Susan's word of the day into her introduction, and then asked everyone to reveal five things they had learnt about themselves or enjoyed over this past year. 
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After three excellent speeches it was only fitting that we had three of the best evaluators up on deck to give feedback.
Joining Luqman and Gina, was Alex McKee from Liberty Speakers using the opportunity to warm up for the Division H Evaluation Contest​.

After the break the meeting resumed with Afia leading the Table Topics session with questions related to our theme 'protesting' posed to each speaker. As has now become the norm we had immediate evaluations of each topic.

The session was going so well until disaster struck as our ship went down and we were pitched overboard! Or rather, the Zoom meeting ended and we were all abruptly ejected.
Aminat our Zoom Master was quick to launch the lifeboats and restart the meeting, and our members clambered back on board, although sadly a couple of guests may have been lost at sea.

Susan returned to the stage to give us her grammarian's report on how well language had been used throughout the meeting, and if we had been ' savvy' enough to use the word of the day.

It was really nice to end the evening chatting with our visitors, particularly former member Gertrude, and our friends from Liberty Speakers Pearl, Carol, and Alex.

Meeting awards were presented to Aminat for Best Table Topic, Alex for Best Evaluator, Matt for Best Speaker, and the President's award went to Sandra for being an exemplary Timekeeper and of course for those stunning backgrounds!

Our meeting was kicked off by Zoom Master and SAA for the meeting Luqman who ran us through the house rules and Zoom functionality.

Afia our Toastmaster for the evening introduced 'new beginnings and spring time' as the theme for the meeting before inviting Timekeeper Troy to explain his role, and then Grammarian Aminat to reveal the word-of-the day 'collywobbles'!

Sandra ran our warm-up session challenging us to give a greeting or say a phrase in another language or dialect. The club responded with words in Spanish, Hungarian, Twi, Swazi, Creole, French, Yuraba, Swahili, and Jamaican!

Gina, Susan and Aseem were up to deliver prepared speeches based on projects from the Pathways educational programme.

​Gina's speech was a wonderful celebration of her father's 100th birthday and shared his wisdom 'nothing beats a failure but a try'!

Susan our second speaker told us of the importance of the power of listening, and talked about stress, crying and laughter.

Finally, our third speaker Aseem shared his experiences of being a protégé/mentee in his speech about mentoring.

To evaluate our speakers we had Sean Dean (visiting Toastmaster and Immediate Past President at Society Speakers), Norma, and Matt all providing insightful feedback for the benefit of the speakers and audience.

In the second half of the meeting Dan ran an innovative and fun Table Topics session asking us all to be news reporters, giving each speaker a 'story' and then prompting them with random keywords to try and incorporate into their story on the fly.

Grammarian Aminat reported on the language used throughout the meeting and especially the word of the day 'collywobbles' which many had managed to use, our Toastmaster Afia an impressive nine times!

Florence our VPPR recently delivered a motivational 75 minute seminar to 30 women and told us all about this amazing success story. Congratulations to Florence, such a wonderful testimonial of how Toastmasters has helped one of our members to go away and excel!

We received some lovely comments and feedback on the meeting from our wonderful guests Rupa and Sherelle, and from visiting Toastmasters Sean and Sara.

Finally onto the awards and club business. Norma was recognised for completing Level 2 of the Innovative Planning path.

Gina won both Best Table Topic and Best Speaker. Matt was voted best evaluator and Luqman picked up the President's Award for a flawless job as first time Zoom Master!