MALVERN Speakers' last meeting of the year took the form of a Christmas dinner at the Mount Pleasant Hotel, with the courses well separated by numerous eloquent contributions from members and guests.
It was a little like the thés dansants fashionable in the 1920s and '30s, but with speeches instead of dancing between the courses.
Presiding genially as always was Sergeant-at-Arms Dave 'Santa Claus/Rudolf' Bradley.
There were two full-length speeches. The first came from Stuart Telling, who made a gracious presentation to club founder member Caroline Bellhouse upon her achieving her Advanced Communicator Silver award, gained over 20 years in four Toastmasters clubs in Australia and England.
The second was a typically polished and humorous contribution from birthday girl Hilary Benoit, describing a distinctly fraught family Thanksgiving get-together.
A dozen or so of the others present were called up to present unprepared one-minute talks on surprise subjects set by Stuart Telling and Rosalind Graham.
The winners were decided by the volume of cries of Rudolf from the assembled company – cries that might have been heard at the other end of Belle Vue Terrace! What would Queen Victoria, who once stayed here, have thought?
Next meeting will be at the usual venue, The Great Malvern Hotel in Graham Road at 7.30pm on Tuesday, January 13.
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