Fermoy Toastmasters began the new season for 2017 on a bright, confident and very enjoyable note with a highly successful and entertaining first meeting on the evening of Tuesday, January 17th, at the Fermoy Youth Centre. Club President Eilish Ui Bhriain extended to all our members and friends warmest good wishes at the outset of another year filled with great hope and promise. She expressed the delight and gratitude of all of us at seeing such a large attendance with a number of very welcome guests to this opening celebration of personal growth and friendship.
Jerry Hennessy then assumed the chairmanship and control of the meeting for the following two hours, introducing the speakers and participants with his relaxed, easy style and assured lightness of touch, guiding the proceedings along briskly, smoothly and refreshingly. To set the mood for the programme of set speeches, Frank O’Driscoll came to the lectern with ready smiling affability and grace to set before the meeting a selection of widely diverse themes and gentle challenges for the topics session in which members are called upon to speak without prior notice. With a particular emphasis given to members who may not be on the set programme for the evening and to maximise the participation of all, the initial respondent receives up to two minutes to offer their views, thoughts and feelings while others may follow with just one minute add-ons as they have had a little more time to think of what they would like to say. Very soon an eager spontaneity had taken hold with the bracing effervescence of minds stirring into action with renewed vigour, energy and immediacy.
Ideas and contributions rippled delightfully back and forth across the room with subjects ranging from curing the common cold; an invitation to imagine you stood in the shoes of Vladimir Putin; what you had for breakfast that morning, which drew from Seoirse Neilan a most thoughtful and informative spontaneous presentation on the pleasures and blessings of healthy eating and a high-fibre diet, a subject to which we all hope he will return at greater length in the near future. Following on from the recent Apollo House protest in Dublin, Kevin Walsh was asked what public building in Cork he would like to see occupied, opting immediately for the City Hall and embarked on an hilarious evocation of some of the sensory experiences and not least the pungent odours of Leeside for which he won the Blue Ribbon for the night’s Best Topic.
With everyone now happily stimulated and in buoyant mood, the audience were eagerly receptive for the set speeches that followed. It is always a great pleasure to welcome an Icebreaker maiden speaker to the lectern, but having two on the same night was something so very gratifying and wonderful. Marie and Conor MacAree each in their turn delivered lovely and impressive debut performances that deeply impressed us all.
Marie told us of her civil service career so far and then with a lovely quiet and gentle style vividly portrayed her love of triathlon athletics involving swimming, running and cycling events, this last sometimes over very tough and challenging mountain terrain. Usually training twice a day, she follows her sporting path with immense dedication and commitment, achieving levels of athletic prowess that are truly awesome and exemplary. Marie shared her enthusiasm with that same generosity of spirit that also makes for the highly accomplished Toastmaster to which she is already well on her way to becoming, returning to her seat with a warm and well-deserved smile of having achieved something very uplifting and satisfying. The speech was later evaluated very adroitly by Johanna Hegarty who offered her warmest congratulation on this brilliant start of a great journey.
Marie was immediately followed by her husband Conor, who gave us a brief introductory flavour of his life so far. A native of Limerick, he enjoys a good rich cup of coffee and is an assessor and consultant to the building industry monitoring projects to ensure they are completed on time and to specification. He recalled the invaluable learning curve that were his early working days in London and also of an interlude spent in Moscow where he gained many fascinating insights into Russian society and culture. Later his evaluator Tricia Neilan lauded him on the confidence and aplomb of his presentation. Given with charm and ease, Conor concluded by saying, ‘Thank you for listening’, but in reality it is we who thank him for making such a fine and memorable opening speech to our club. We welcome Marie and Conor to our membership and wish them every success in the future.
Our Meetings Organiser, Kevin O’Neil, made a beautiful speech so appropriate to this time of New Year by outlining the history of The Calendar as we have come to know it today. He explained that while a year of 365 days corresponds to the earth’s orbit around the sun, the seven day week is an entirely artificial human construct. Our calendar was first established under Julius Caesar in 45 BC and it lasted for many centuries thereafter. However a fundamental flaw in its calculations eventually caused dates to drift apart from real time by some eleven days. This mathematical error was corrected under the auspices of Pope Gregory XIII in 1582 and continues to serve us well to this day, although many countries of the Reformed tradition stoutly held out against the Gregorian calendar for a very long time, Britain not accepting it until 1752 and the very cradle of Western civilisation, Greece, did not make the switch until 1923. How unwilling people can be to accept the right thing when it goes against the grain of their prejudices! Kevin brought us on a very well-informed and fascinating journey through time in a most well-delivered and fine speech that was highly praised by evaluator Mary Whelan.
Finally, Denis O’Brien made an excellent summation of the historical themes of the Easter Rising Centenary Year. In a remarkably concise and lucid presentation he gave a vivid overall account of this seminal and momentous event, calling to mind the sense of patriotic martyrdom endured by the executed leaders that so impressed him on a recent visit to Kilmainham Gaol. It is an ever dramatic and deeply moving story of defiance and defeat, of failure and tragedy but one illuminated by such extraordinary heroism, courage and self-sacrifice in the name of generous and humane ideals of freedom and equality that led the way to ultimate victory and new beginnings. A story that never loses anything in the retelling and Denis did it ample justice and to great effect for which he was rightly and most richly complimented by David Walsh.
Michael Sheehan as General Evaluator gave his overall impression of a meeting that set a bright and positive keynote for the year ahead. We hope to continue and further that happy and sweet momentum at our next gathering in the Fermoy Youth Centre on Tuesday evening next, January 31st, beginning at 8.15 pm. Our door and our hearts are ever open in the very warmest welcome and we hope you will come to see us then. For further information, please contact Eilish Ui Bhriain at 087 1235203 or Kevin Walsh at 058 60100 or log on to our mobile-friendly website toastmastersfermoy.com or find us on Twitter @ FermoyT.