The joys of a long weekend!

Arriving at Thursday's session I was aware that Friday was a holiday but hadn't taken the logical step of that meaning a long weekend, so I was surprised to find only 12 of us there. I kept careful watch on the door to see if the usual suspects would come charging in at the last minute but the number stayed stubbornly at 12 and Pilar, punctual as ever, began the session on time.

I was also surpised, upon careful examination of the agenda, to find that I was the blogger. This strange turn of events can be explained away as my clumsy attempt to confirm that I was the Table Topic Master and the fact that Easy Speak still enjoys playing games with my mental health. I realised I was trapped, accepted fate and watched Pilar introduce the TM of the day, Emmanuel. I am a great believer that a small crowd can often be more daunting than a large one but this proved no challenge to Emmanuel who brought energy, humour and a light touch to his role and supplied us with the word of the day, Paramount, an example of its usage can be seen in the sentence "It is of paramout importance to be vigilant when using Easy Speak!!!"

Laeticia was our first speaker and gave her second speech from the CC manual called "Travelling, Travelling" where she took us on a tour of some of her favourite destinations and some of the movies that inspired her to visit them. A lovely speech that inspired all of us to look at Mary Poppins in a new light! Oscar gave his fourth speech from the Speaking to Inform manual entitled "Divide and Conquer" where he explained the importance of being a mentor, both personally and for the club, and asked the a relevant question for all of us "Are we getting the best out of our club?". At the end of his speech he handled a tricky Q&A session from a tough crowd very well.Celine finished the prepared speech section with the first speech from the Entertaining Speaker manual " My first impression of Barcelona" where she described coming to Barcelona for the first time when she was 18 to do a six week work placement, only to find herself in a city full of lesbians speaking in a strange language.

Our three evaluators, in order of appearance, were Michael Chakal, Pilar and Gianluca (known to us and the police as GianHero) who all gave highly effective evaluations of their speakers although the GE  of the evening, Ethel, did point out that there was some imbalance in the negative/positive comments ratio (you know who you are!) 

Table Topics Master was a handsome, charming multi-tasking Irish God who decided not to go in for the long winded questions with layers of meaning but instead gave each participant an object which they had to use as a jumping point to create their mini speech. Congratulations to Gabriella, Bestanist and Prince who were given a 20 euro note, an apple and Coke (cola) in that order.

Ethel the GE closed the session with reports from her team, Herr Toribio as timekeeper and Lady Opaz as Grammarian/Ah Counter and Ethel evaluated the session including her advice to the evaluators, see above, and an entirely justfied criticism of the Table Topics Master and his failure to explain the concept and times which he can only blame on the worry he felt about having to do this blog and more importantly post it, even though Herr Toribio insists it's child's play.

We had one guest with us, Ricardo, who thoroughly enjoyed himself, came with us for nachos and who we hope to see again soon.

The joys of a long weekend gave us a small crowd, expertly managed by Emmanuel, and for those of you who couldn't be with us I hope you had as much fun on Thursday night as we did!!

See you next week,

Cormac