Report by: KEVIN WALSH
On the evening of Tuesday October 17th, the very day after Storm Ophelia had wreaked havoc and destruction right across the country, Fermoy Toastmasters together with very welcome visitors from our sister clubs in Mallow, Charleville and Mitchelstown, assembled at the local Youth Centre to celebrate the joys of speaking in the beautiful language of humour and wit. It was an opportunity to step away from the dark shadows of adversity and to proclaim that side of our nature that finds in laughter and happiness everything that is most wonderful in life. With a large and diverse attendance there was a very lovely atmosphere of friends gathered so cheerfully together that ensured a memorably entertaining evening ahead.
Some were not able to join us busily coping with the disruption wrought by the terrible storm. Our President Kevin O’Neill sent his apologies but David Walsh was invited to assume the presidential chain of office for the evening and did so with a marked grace and dignity. Our Meeting Planner, John Sherlock, called to wish us well but then had to leave straightaway on account of a very sad bereavement: we send to him and his family our very sincerest sympathies to him. Johanna Hegarty as Acting Area Governor guided proceedings forward with exuberance and precision. We were delighted to welcome her son Rob as our special guest and all enjoyed the pleasure of his company. After a brief but very effective Topics session from Mallow’s Anne Buckle based around Kerry footballer Colm Cooper’s testimonial match, the contest then got underway with five participants.
Liam Jones from Charleville evoked images of skiing holidays in the majestic snow-capped Alpine peaks with a particular emphasis on the merriment and tumultuous enjoyments of après-ski, at one point standing dramatically on a chair and delivering his speech in a disarmingly gentle and quiet style, striking a note of contrast that made a very great and most genial impression on his listeners. Our own Jerry Hennessy reprised his delightful presentation on the pleasures of being a wedding guest. Now as anyone who watches soap opera will tell you, whenever a wedding is depicted all sorts of comic situations unfailingly arise. And so it was with Jerry’s warm and engaging portrait of an imaginary wedding reception, bringing all the different characters to life in a most pleasurable and charming way. Bobby Buckley of Mallow – who had travelled from Dublin specially to be here – gave a lovely and heart-warming portrayal of his early life and the search to find self-definition and identity that is the common thread that binds us all together, bringing the story all the way forward to today when his grandchildren greet him so joyfully and eagerly as they would such a gentle, refined and pleasant gentleman.
Frank O’Driscoll returned to his speech evoking the Sixties era of popular music and early television when all young boys and men went to the barber shop to receive the traditional short back-and-side haircuts which in a time of rapid change soon came to be superseded by the new styles of the hairdresser leaving the red-and-white barber’s pole as a forlorn sight in many an Irish town. But then bringing the story into our own time, Frank gave a hilarious and ever so well-acted account of going to the Turkish barber and describing with funny and winching vividness the use of burners to remove hair-roots from customers’ ears in a relaxed, smiling and most entertaining style.
Dick Lyons of Mitchelstown also took on a wedding theme and interwove this with the freedom of the outdoor motorbike lifestyle riding the hot wind and following the white line to wherever the mood may take, but finding that driving one’s daughter to her marriage in a German-style sidecar was not everyone’s cup of tea. All of this was in the speaker’s generous and colourful imagination and it is truly one of the great pleasures of Toastmasters that it allows you to go to the lectern and for seven glorious minutes to take on a new persona and to explore the golden fields of creativity. There is something so exciting and liberating in all of this as you search previously unvisited regions of the spirit and enter into a spirt of tremendous fun with a group of very lovely and special people. We are all there to support each other and to build one another as we proceed on life’s great journey. And we travel together so much better and happier in the circle of friends that is Toastmasters.
One of the most enjoyable interludes of any of our meetings is the tea break when members and visitors can mingle and chat with warm tea and coffee served with biscuits and sometimes cake. It affords an opportunity for good friends to share a very relaxed and convivial interlude and for new members and guests to get to meet and to know everybody. It is such a joy to hear the buzz of chatter and warm personal interaction with laughter and people happy in each other’s company. This is something outside the formal structures of the organisation but it represents the most valuable thing that we do: offering a centre for people to come and be happy together, each and every one of us using our own communication skills to relate to others and to discover our mutual richness. By being together and sharing everything with each other our lives are greatly enhanced and become so much more satisfying and rewarding in every way.
David sounded the gavel after fifteen minutes to call the contest back to order, for we now had to enter the second event of our evening, the Topics Contest. Participants leave the room and are ushered back in an order previously drawn to speak off the cuff for just over two minutes on a subject without any prior notice. This ensures that they do not know what their fellow contestants have already said. It is fascinating both for the judges and the rest of the audience to hear the widely different and contrasting responses affirming personal uniqueness and how there are always so many ways of looking at things. Bobby Buckley, Eilish Ui Bhriain, Pat Sexton (Mallow), Mary Whelan and Tadgh O’Keeffe all came to the lectern to speak on their concept of Perfect Happiness. Eilish gave a delightful response based on her joy in family, in writing and baking, on the pleasures of being among friends in Toastmasters and her long-time enjoyment of Vincent Browne in his talk show manifestation from which he has recently retired, leaving a marked void in her life, which drew a ripple of appreciative mirth and applause from the audience. Pat Sexton struck a chord with his listeners when he spoke on how at a time when the terrible storm had cast such darkness over the land, we had now come together in the light of friendship and conviviality and in so doing had won a very gentle but most emphatic victory for the cause of happiness and of all things that make our hearts warmer, more human and more joyous.
After another short topics session from Anne Buckley and a very positive talk from our visiting Divisional Governor in Killarney, Gerard Mannix, the counters in the meantime gathered the judges’ ballots and retired briefly to add and verify the results which Johanna then announced. In the Topics Contest the Second Placed speaker was Eilish Ui Bhriain and the Winner Pat Sexton. In the Humorous Speech category, Liam Jones gained Runner-Up position and the popular and acclaimed Overall Winner was Frank O’Driscoll, who so richly merited his great success. Another round of competition at Divisional level in Limerick is to follow while our own next meeting will be on that spookiest night of the year, Halloween, Tuesday next, October 31st at 8.15 pm. So be sure to bring a friend! For further information, please contact Mary Whelan at 087 7971006 or Kevin Walsh at 058 60100 or log on to our mobile-friendly website toastmastersfermoy.com or find us on Twitter @ FermoyT.