The evening of Tuesday, April 7th was gloriously fine and it was in the very best of good spirits that we came for our meeting in celebration of friendship and the joy of life. We gathered in the River Room of the Grand Hotel, with its two wide bay windows looking out over a delightful prospect as inside our members joined by very welcome visitors from our sister clubs of Mallow and Charleville served up a delightful evening of sparkling entertainment and conviviality.
Our President, Mary Whelan, opened the meeting by extending a very cordial welcome and warming the hearts of us all by her gracious kindness and charm. Or Toastmaster of the evening, David Walsh, then steered proceedings forward; relaxed, affable and at ease, he fostered that relaxed and pleasing atmosphere where everyone can give of their very best and make for an evening that was special and most uplifting.
With all of his humour and vast experience, John Quirke served us up a wonderful topics session that got everyone thinking and responding and interacting with such eagerness and enthusiasm. His choice of subjects were wry, thoughtful and compelling, such as loving your neighbour, but don’t cut down the hedge; commonsense is like a deodorant, those who need it don’t use it; no matter what happens, we can all wake up in the morning knowing there is always someone worse off, to name only but a very few.
This last drew a particularly moving response from Seoirse Neilan who spoke very movingly of his difficulty in coping with his initial loss of vision, of a very natural human resentment against others who follow selfish and mean pathways and who seem to enjoy the undiminished use of their faculties, yet with time he came to terms with his situation and found within himself a great resilience and sources of strength which he previously had never known, telling us that no matter what may happen, not alone can life still be worthwhile, it can be so rewarding and very beautiful if we truly want it to be. For this, Seoirse won the blue ribbon for the Best Topic of the meeting that gave us all such eloquent testimony to the power of the human spirit. I must also mention an outstanding contribution from our President, Mary Whelan, on the theme of friendship, emphasising how real friends do not burden us or try to take over our lives, but are with us always in times of sadness and joy always letting us be ourselves and enabling us to be our better selves.
Four great speeches provided us with remarkable diversity and interest. One of our new members, Claire Guy, took us on a journey of discovery into the fascinating world of the hive and told us something of the lives of the bumblebee that from now on should be a regular visitor to our summer gardens, its distinctive humming a sound that never fails to strike a happy chord, of how these amazing insects can travel at speeds of fifty-four kilometres an hour and at two-hundred wing-beats a second. Claire emphasised the vital role of bees in the pollination and preservation of plant life upon which everything depends and on how we need to respect these tiny creatures that are among our very best and most indispensable friends. We were given a glimpse into a most fascinating aspect of the natural world and we warmly look forward to hearing so much more from our new and most welcome friend, Claire, who in her short time with us is already making such a special and illuminating contribution to the club.
Eilish Ui Bhriain brought to us a very lovely speech indeed focusing in on the human and gentle aspects of life, entitled ‘Tay And Cake’, taking a humorous look at visitors calling in and the hilarious things that can accompany the provision of hospitality. Like the man who dropped in to see his neighbours and while he was there weather closed in but his mind was fixed not on the torrential rain outside but on the drop that hung from the nose of his hostess who was coming down with a nasty cold and how it remained pendulously suspended there for the whole evening as they sat and chatted by the fireside. When she at last urged him to stay and not to venture out again on such a bad night, he replied, ‘It all depends on how the drop will fall’. Then Eilish went on to tell us of an occasion many years ago when American visitors were expected at short notice and her Mother had baked a cake for them and left it on the windowsill outside to cool off, only for the dog Shep to snatch it away, bringing her to the brilliant concluding line that ‘we can’t have our cake and eat it’.
Another of our newly joined members, Peggy O’Donovan, gave us a very well-informed talk on the abolition of milk quotas, telling of the great potential and opportunities that await this country as one of the world’s leading and best milk producing countries where a much reduced number of producers have unattained levels of unsurpassed productivity and with barriers to expansion now removed have the opportunity to go in a big way into the Chinese and other huge international markets. It is estimated that twenty-eight thousand extra milk loads will soon be trundling along the roads of County Cork. Peggy’s vision was strikingly optimistic and that is the spirit in which we can all move forward into a brighter and better future.
Our visiting speaker form Mallow, Rona Coughlan, gave us a fascinating speech on the world of Greek mythology and legend, a world of often vindictive and capricious gods, creatures of the human imagination that yet offered a very realistic portrayal of existence that was in those distant times as it still is today so often random, precarious and unpredictable. This message was central to Rona’s very fine and impressively researched speech and her presentation was rounded off by printouts distributed to the audience explaining the relationships between the principal gods of Mount Olympus.
I often refer to speakers as giving their speeches. And that is no mere chance, for Toastmasters flourishes only because everyone is so generous with their time, their efforts and creative energies so in the meeting room we can do and achieve so much together that none of us could ever do on our own. No speaker stands alone – all receive positive feedback from the evaluators, a role that night so well carried through by Kevin Walsh, John Sherlock, Johanna Hegarty and Kieran Connolly, with Jerry Hennessy offering his overall impression of the meeting as General Evaluator. Before summer rolls out there are still a few chances left to attend a Toastmasters meeting in Fermoy. We look forward to our next gathering on Tuesday next, April 21st, in the Grand Hotel, Fermoy, at 8.15 pm and we look forward to seeing you all there. For further information, please contact Fanahan Colbert at 086 8239007 or Kevin Walsh at 058 60100 or log on to toastmastersfermoy.com