Finding Thursday Meetings And Clubs Meeting Specific Days

Which clubs meet on a Thursday?
You can look at notifications from Meetup to find which clubs are meeting in your local area trough the week.

In London, HOD meets on two or three Thursdays each month, usually the first and third Thursdays.

Toastmasters International Find a Club
If you go to the Toastmasters International Find a Club page, you can select your area, the distance you are willing to travel, and find all the clubs meeting on that day.

If you visit a new country on holiday or business, and you cannot see a club meeting on your preferred day, write to the President or VPE of the biggest and busiest club in the area and ask if there are any meetings.

You might find that they have changed their day or meeting and venue but not yet updated the website. Meetings might have moved temporarily because of a national holiday.

When I go on holiday, whether for a weekend away, or a week, or two months, I check the local speaking clubs. I note the dates in my diary, write offering to speak or evaluate or be grammarian, to take over a role at the last minute if somebody drops out. I ask for directions.

If the club meeting is immovable, I can move my family arrangements, such as dinner out, to fit around important events such as a club Christmas party, a club inviting me to speak, or a seasonl celebration or a contest at which I am a judge.

AuthorAngela Lansbury, CL, ACG, member of HOD in London, England.

Tall Tales Contest Highlights - including my singing Santa

Problem How to get silence when you start? Answer I got silence from the audience when I started the Tall Tales Contest at HOD Speakers' Club in London by pressing the ear of the Santa on the front of my red Xmas theme sweater. Santa continues dancing until you have everybody's attention. Then you press the ear again and it switches off. By now the whole audience is smiling and I'm beaming with delight at my success and their surprise. Story I'm been looking forward to using my dancing singing Santa for weeks, since I'd bought it in the St Luke's shop. Just the thing! I thought. On the right of the picture of our group you can see me wearing my red Santa sweater, which outclassed my Christmas cake hat which normally gets attention.

My joke opening for the tall tales contest was: "Welcome to the HOD Tall Tales Contest. I wondered why they hadn't chosen somebody taller to be contest chair of a tall tales contest, but perhaps they thought I would tell a tall tale about making myself taller." Lots For Speaking Position - Luck of the draw? We had already drawn lots for speakers, numbers on pieces of white paper. You draw lots so that you don't have the organisers favouring their friends with the preferred first and last spots. Some people like to be first; others like to be last. Others are sure they will win, or lose, or don't think the order of speaking makes any difference, or shrug, or are happy to oblige somebody who wants to swap. In the past I've been a secret swapper. The aim of the exercise is to keep everybody happy. So I allowed two speakers to swap numbered positions and speak in their preferred places. Yes, once I have given everybody an equal chance, I don't care if somebody who doesn't care swaps with somebody who does. I like to keep people happy and confident.

SPEAKER Sina Spoke on Nine Snakes Speaker Sina entertained us with a speech entitled Nine Snakes about climbing a mountain called Nine Snakes in Iran. He donned a backpack and stood with one foot on the table another on the chair. I thought this was very effective. Better than standing on a table, which makes everybody nervous in case he falls off. And keeps him in climbing mode. JUDGES I made the whole audience judges. That keeps the judges anonymous. Everybody gets practice at being judges, so you can call on them to be judges at the next contest. Here's the audience writing, whilst the next speaker Martin is waiting to be called. Martin Doe spoke on My Adventure In a Post Industrial World. He was on fine form and most amusing. The speech was very visual. He began at our meeting in Harrow, went to locations in the area, spoke to people, nearly got arrested, showed pictures of us on an electronic device, escaped, travelled back in time to now. His speech incorporated geography, history (time travel), and conflict, danger, an escape. However, I was confused as to whether he was in the past or the future. He was travelling in time to the future. But people were using bows and arrows. When we filled in time at the end of the meeting with interviews of the candidates I stuck to three simple questions: your speech; your work/day job; your hobby/what you do for fun. I then discovered that his speech was in the future when we ran out of power sources and had to go back to bows and arrows. Everybody who speaks gets a certificate of participation. Speaker Gill Ornstein on A Tall Tale of Tiles "This is a tongue-twister," I said. "I've been practising saying it all afternoon!" WINNERS The First Place winner was President Gill, with her speech, a story with three characters, herself, her husband, and the VIP man delivering large heavy tiles in a van which blocked their narrow street. I'd heard this speech before when she won with it at a humorous speech contest.

The Second Place Winner was Ade. His speech was entitled, 'Back To The ... Past'. He spoke about the future, and how phones might run our lives. His name is pronounced Add - ay, like advertisement and addition, (not aid).

The Third Place Winner was Robert Baker. His speech Shedding Light On Thomas and Rover featured Edison who invented the light bulb, on advice from his dog Rover, who understood human speech but, like all dogs, concealed the fact. However, equally memorable was his table topic. (At the end we had table topics with everybody telling a tall tale. To my surprise and delight, the speakers all found something to say about the first three simple subjects I chose, a problem with a dog, a house, or a bath. Robert's story was how, in a new house, the water was unexpectedly hot and he got into a boiling hot bath. He demonstrated the bath with two chairs which he lay across with his feet in the air, demonstrated how he had to support himself in the air on his elbows, then wiggled his ankle to show how he had to turn off the hot tap with his toes.

Our tally counters were Angela Hook and Oana (pronounced one-ah) Stroie. Timers were Dennis Newman and Bobbie Rutherford. They seem to enjoy their job. On the right of the picture is Angela Hook. I need an L after the name Angela on my badge; otherwise two of us with the same first name get muddled up. What did we learn from this contest? Commend Recommend Commend: You need to focus on one story and one prop so that at the end of the contest the judges have a clear memory of each speech and what it was about. Indra, our Chief Judge, had been in another club contest, and was able to be a judge because he was no longer competing. He said he had felt uncomfortable telling an untrue story about anything, including himself. (He had told a story from mythology.) An alternative to telling a story from mythology or the distant past (such as the creation of the earth, or what it was like to live in a cave, is to pick the future. I learned that a tall tales, although it seems absurd, contest is a lot of fun. TIMERS AND A TRICK In the group photo notice Robbie on the left of the photo, creating the illusion that his legs are half size by kneeling on his shoes.

AUTHOR Angela Lansbury PS If you ever come to London, England, you can visit Harrovians or HOD clubs in the suburbs of NW London. Several more clubs are in central London and around England and Ireland. If you visit Singapore there are about 350 clubs and when I am there I have a choice of half a dozen clubs within 20 miles most days except Sunday when there may be only one or two clubs, often a bilingual Tamil and English speaking club with speeches either all in English or in both languages.

Birthday Party Theme Speakers' Meeting at HOD Speakers' Club in Harrow and what I learned

Birthday Theme
Birthdays was the theme I chose when I (Angela Lansbury) was toastmaster of the evening at an HOD Speakers' meeting because that week was my birthday. I wore a badge which said Birthday Girl; I placed a larger stand up It's My Birthday badge on the table; I asked a member to hang my Happy Birthday banner across the pinboard behind the lectern and I wore a gold foil hat.

Birthday theme topics was part of my plan. Importantly I had prepared half a dozen topics on the theme of birthdays and written them on a sheet of A4 paper to hand to anybody at the meeting if I had to ask somebody else to do topics unprepared, even a newcomer. All they had to do was look nonchalant and read out the topic.

Looking back, I could have gone a step further by asking each person who came onto the stage to say their birth sign or birthday month and why they like it.

I could have said, "My month is March and it's daffodil month," and I could have brought my vase of daffodils. I did think of that. But I had banner and badges and cake to carry. No time to tip out the water, nor find an unbreakable vase.

It would have been quicker to have grabbed scissors and cut a couple of flowers on my way out through the garden to the car. Maybe next year. If we'd had only two speakers at the meeting I could have filled time with the ongoing chats about birthday months.

Panic, Problem - Keep Calm & Carry On
Panic could have set in. President, Tony Winyard, was unable to attend because he was the winner of another club's contest.  Three more backbone members of the club were absent. Gil Ornstein was a target speaker at a contest.  Founder member and meeter and greeter Mike was away on holiday.

So I was greeting, waving at newcomers, rushing forward to hand out badges and pens. I wanted badges with names written large - preferably felt tip pens, not biro or pencil, to help me remember who was who when calling them onto the stage.

If I could not read the badge at a distance at least thanking them by name and leading applause as they left. The name is important for the audience to remember if they want to vote for that person - in fact next time I'm Toastmaster of the Evening I shall say that, "Please help me give a rousing round of applause for our speaker - 'John/Joan Smith' - and note his/her name on your feedback form and tick his/her name on your agenda it or make a mental note if you think s/he deserves a ribbon."

The reminders about feedback and voting would also help me to remember to ask the audience to write feedback for one minute after each speech and to vote.

Alan was taken ill leaving un unfilled speech slot. President Tony had helpfully emailed members asking for volunteers to fill roles. Early in the week I'd had trouble logging into the club website. At one point I found myself on an old website, which delayed matters further.

I also had too many photos from toastmasters meetings worldwide on my laptops, phones and icloud storage. I knew that I would have computer trouble later in the week. I offered to give up the role of Toastmaster to somebody else who had access for phone and laptop and website, but Tony told me to carry on and said he would get David to send me login details and he (Tony) would email members and try to fill the remaining roles.

The evening before seemed like a total disaster looming, as I had been out all day and had no laptop access at all and very little an intermittent phone coverage. Tony and I agreed that 'it'll be all right on the night'.

Luckily I had printed off one copy of the agenda with mostly empty roles the previous week. I had thought of doing what I'd seen done in a club in Singapore. Set up my laptop, or somebody else's, either to project on screen, or to read off it as a reminder.

Three of us arrived an hour early, David, Peter, and me - thanks to Peter, our Sergeant at Arms (the person who often has the key to the venue as well as setting up the room/s, banners and lecterns and chairs). I wrote onto my agenda the names of people as they came in through the door and volunteered them.

Stand-in President was former President David. Coralie, president of another club and former Area Governor (managing five clubs) could be relied on to do a major role. She wanted to be an evaluator as she was to be an evaluator later in a contest.

When I was driven to the meeting by Peter, our SAA, extra time talking together was a great help, because I was able to persuade him to give a third speech. As meeting organizer it's my policy to always have a minimum of three speeches to be sure that you can present prizes, which are not awarded when the meeting has only two speakers.

First speaker - 'Lucky' Kuldeep
Out speech session started with an Icebreaker, the first speech in the Toastmasters speech manual, by Kuldeep, whose name means light. His title was 'Lucky'. His punchline was, The harder you work the luckier you get.

Second speaker - Bijan enjoying 'Happy New Year!'
Bijan on Happy New Year, the Persian Muslim New Year which marks the vernal equinox. He explained that the vernal equinox is when the days and nights are the same length in the northern and southern hemisphere. He also showed the set of foods eaten then, which all begin with the letter S in the Persian language.




Third speaker - Peter on 'Belief - or Relief?'
Peter's speech featured a drama, imagine you are in the Lake District following a group, it gets foggy, you lose the others, and fall, hurting your ankle and tumbling over the edge of a steep drop. You call and perhaps pray for help. When your group leader or friends return to rescue you, do you feel belief or just relief?

Table Topics - Birthdays

What was your last/best birthday gift, given or received?
Richard Baker said he got pneumonia in the evening, after a great birthday.

Describe your best birthday restaurant.
Angela Lansbury: Magic restaurant - door handle hidden in a wall of door handles. Magician throws scroll on table which turns out to be the menu. Restaurant now closed. Previous years we went to Fellini and other Italian restaurants in Hatch End dim lights and bring the birthday boy or girl a cake slice topped by a candles which has a flame a like firework rocket, which you blow but it goes out and relights. Happy Birthday music fills the room.

Break time Birthday, Beetroot and New Year Date
I had brought birthday sponge cake. Bijan's mother offered her confections of dates in pastry. (See later post for more pictures.) Robert Baker brought beetroot and chocolate minicakes.

Evaluations
Peter had no evaluator so he conducted an audience Evaluation of his speech.
Coralie praised speakers for triads (sets of three), deeper, steeper, longer.

Evaluator David congratulated Bijan on 'impersonating a clock'.  (The countdown hand on TV/radio going tick tock, Bijan's hand left right left.)

General Evaluation
As we did not have a general evaluator, we asked the whole audience to act as general evaluator of the whole meeting. Toastmaster Angela, was commended for verve and theme. One suggestions was to have a printed agenda, although some people said they'd enjoyed the more informal meeting just for once for a change, like a holiday, or Friday. Another recommend: welcome guests by name at the start and invite them to introduce themselves.

I think the Toastmaster's in HOD has too much to do. In other clubs the President or VPE prints the agenda. The Toastmaster's main job is to set the theme, plan introductions to speakers and guests, and check everybody knows what to do in their roles. So I think the VPE, President or another helper should do the printing and find the GE, timer, and other last minute roles to fill.

Speakers: Peter pointed out that at least two people stood casually with a hand hidden in their pocket. Amusingly Peter said, mentioning no names, then mentioned their names.

Prize Winning Speakers

Peter won the best speaker ribbon, presented by President of the night, former President David Phelops.

Best Speaker ribbon went too Peter Jacques for his speech on Belief and Relief
 Best evaluator ribbon went to David.

Best Table Topics speakers

Best table Topics speakers were Angela and Robert Baker.

Coralie asked how many people had brought their manuals to the meeting and got their role evaluated? I'd brought my manual but not had it filled in for the Toastmasters role. (Can somebody now do that, please,  Coralie?) Coralie asked who had read the entire manual.
A heckler shouted, "Are you going to test us?"
"Yes," enthused Coralie, "read your manual and I'll test you at the next meeting! Manual test - ten questions!"