On the evening of Tuesday October 20^th, Fermoy Toastmasters in our lovely new Youth Centre venue shared a very special evening with our friends and colleagues from sister clubs in our Area Humorous and Topics contest comprising Charleville, Mitchelstown and Mallow.  Our Area Governor Johanna Hegarty and official organiser of all of our meetings, Eilish Ui Bhriain, put so much work and dedication into putting together the programme of this special evening and nothing could be gratifying than to see their good work crowned with richly deserved success.

Very quickly the room filled up and hummed with warm and genial conversation, one of the most beautiful and joyous sounds in the whole world, that of people coming together in friendship, recreation and good cheer. In this age of social media, smart phones and Facebook, it is heartening to see that there is still no substitute for the pleasure of direct warm human interaction, of meeting up with dear friends, of getting to know new people and rejoicing in the company of old friends, of sharing a good yarn and a laugh, that fills you with such a delightful inner glow of happiness.  As human beings, we are social creatures who are glad in each other’s company: there are few venues when you can better enjoy the gladness of friendship and togetherness than a really genial and relaxed Toastmasters meeting.

The purpose of our organisation is to warm the hearts and expand the minds of all.  The meeting was brought promptly to order by our most affable President, John Sherlock, who bid everyone most warmly and heartily welcome. However it is not the President’s function to chair the meeting, but that of the Toastmaster of the evening or Contest Chairman on this occasion, a role so brightly and pleasantly carried through by one of our distinguished Mallow visitors, Liam Flynn. The Topicsmaster

Neil McAuliffe fostered an agreeable and receptive atmosphere with a number of light and engaging topics that stirred the pond of creative energy and good feeling.  Then the contest proper began, regulated impeccably by a system of coloured lights under the watchful eye of our Timekeepers, Jerry Hennessy and Michael Sheehan, the green coming on at five, the amber at six, the red at seven after which the speaker has thirty seconds’ grace in which to finish.

Our six speakers were then called one by one – a draw taken beforehand decides their order of appearance – to the lectern to deliver their bracingly varied and contrasting presentations.  Brendan Foley shared his passion for athletics and took a light-hearted and comical look on the discomforts and challenges that face the fun runner beating along the hard paved road in all weathers. Mary Whelan reprised her witty and engaging speech on that lost fashion icon, the plastic shopping bag, once such an essential accessory, now something that has almost completely vanished into the memory of sun-filled days at the beach. Frank O’Driscoll took us back once again to that boyhood world of the 1960s when television was so glamorous and new against the backdrop of the 50^th anniversary commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising.

Pat Sexton took his inspiration from Miguel de Cervantes’ 17^th century literary Spanish hero Don Quixote, taking him from the windmills he had once charged at and set him down to face the confusions of life in the 21^st century in a time of wind turbines, finding that the age of chivalry is not dead. Brian O’Farrell presented a new incarnation of a technological hero of much more recent vintage, the late Steve Jobs, convincing the world of the necessity of buying a quite useless gadget in the name of astronomical corporate greed, a very insightful and timely contribution indeed.  Mary Meany presented a memorable and powerful word picture of her participation in a charity cross-country mud race, facing its immense discomforts and unpleasant surprises, yet finding at the end a new source of strength and an expansive sense of personal achievement with quite a few wry chuckles along the way.

Everything must stop for tea in which we were all additionally treated to the tastiest delights of salmon quiche brought to us so skilfully and most generously by Helsa Giles of Mallow Club which was so much enjoyed and for which we were all ever so warmly appreciative and thankful. Thus amply fortified it was on to the Topics Contest in which contestants from each participating club – Pat Sexton, Marie Lyons, Michelle O’Brien, John Kelly, Will Finn, Francis Lowry, Maire Corbett and Conor O’Brien – spoke on the common theme of Would You Tell A Lie In A Good Cause?

Except for the first drawn speaker, all the other contestants leave the room and are called in separately one by one to speak for not more than three and a half minutes on this subject. For the audience, it was so interesting to hear the range and variety of views expressed affirming the uniqueness of every individual. Pat Sexton gave a memorably powerful response as a make-believe election candidate with a plethora of promises to win votes, while Marie Lyons spoke of the quintessentially Irish genius for telling things as they might be, not as they are. Just as in the earlier competition, after each contestant has spoken, the judges have a minute to mark their score sheets and two minutes to place their final marks at the end. The votes are then gathered up and the counters leave the room to add up the figures that spell the sweet title of success.   And then the outcome:- in the Topics category, Pat Sexton and Marie Lyons go on to speak at the Divisional Contest in Limerick on November 1^st, with Mary Meany and Brendan Foley going forward as First and Second-placed speakers for the same occasion.

For Mary Meany of Mitchelstown, her victory represented a dream come true. Her journey in Toastmasters has seen her take immense strides forward through sustained effort, commitment and dedication.  Mary has done that so brilliantly and so well. Moreover while winning is not everything, wanting to win most certainly is. That is the key to excellence. As our Contest Chairman Liam Flynn said, in Toastmasters you never reach the end of your journey, you are always improving and getting ever better. It has been a long time since there was such a popular and universally acclaimed winner as Mary and we with both her and Brendan all the very best in the Limerick contest.

Then our President, John Sherlock, sounded the gavel for the conclusion of such a very successful and pleasant evening, an early and truly great highlight of the current season. Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday evening next, November 3^rd, at the Fermoy Youth Centre at 8.15 pm. We hope that you will join us then for another very special evening of good communication and great conviviality. For further information, please contact Eilish Ui Bhriain at 087 1235203 or Kevin Walsh at 058 60100 or log on to our mobile-friendly websitetoastmastersfermoy.com or find us on Twitter @ FermoyT