Our recent club meeting will be remembered as something of a side-splitter. The tone of this past Tuesday's meeting was set by Toastmaster for the evening, Alan Hunter, who brought along the cheese (some truly priceless puns), while those present provided the crackers!
(Okay that pun was pretty awful.)
The format for Table Topics was a chain-story, whereby a participant had to pick up the story from where their predecessor left off. The story began with Table Topics Master, Craig Stephenson, reading the opening paragraph to Herman Melville's Moby Dick.
In the Algoa Club's “re-imagining” of that great American novel, Nicholas Mitchell gave Melville's narrator, Ishmael, a love interest: Arabella. Mark Barry jettisoned Ishmael's best shipmate Queeqeg and replaced him with a jihadist who was off to fight a holy war, and dying to get into a heaven - replete with 72 virgins.
Our circumnavigating American guest (aka Joel) reintroduced the mythic white whale, and a psycho-sexual Freudian undercurrent. Marlene Van Wyk leapt to defend Arabella's reasons for two-timing Ishmael with her secret husband, The Count (a little character development courtesy of Tom Horne), and three-timing both with the captain of Ishmael's ship.
But there was a foil to the man-eating Arabella, a belly-dancing virgin, with enchanting hips, who had escaped the holy warrior's heaven. The super-seducing 72nd Virgin was Glenis Whitehead's creation, and for it she was voted the winner of this hilarious round of Table Topics.
Following the impromptu portion of the evening the Club was both informed and entertained by three prepared speeches. Educator Fanie Vermaak argued that a trusting relationship between a teacher (parent or mentor) and a child is of far greater benefit to a child's development than corralling children with rules.
Marianah Lourens demonstrated how the “12 Step Program” used by Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) can be used to help anyone change their self-defeating behaviours.
Meteorologist Quinton Jacobs picked up the “Top Toastie Award” for what must have been a Herculean effort to commit to memory his 13-minute “after-dinner speech” about his recent summertime adventure to Antarctica.
It was also the night for a first. Long-time visitor to the Club and recent inductee, Debbie Stephenson, ventured up to the lectern to deliver her first speech: The Toast of the Day. Debbie toasted eating and drinking to good health. She also managed to include Grammarian, Thomas Duffy's Word of the Day: matutinal.
The Algoa Club will meet again on 13 April. Until then be safe on the roads this holiday season.
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