Family influence

Today is my son's birthday. He influenced his family, and one really good influence happened on a car journey. Son sat next to me as I worried about my doctoral viva, and he told me about Toastmasters, the club where you practise speaking in front of people. He asked me to speak for two minutes about my doctoral topic, and I did!  Shortly afterwards, I found our local Toastmasters club and joined. It was such a useful experience that I told his sister, and she joined. Then a year or two later, when his step-sister had to make a speech at a wedding, she joined, and she got her partner to join too. The two of them got so involved that they were on the local committee helping out a lot.
All through the influence of one member of the family.

Holiday topics

Toastmaster topics master this week asked us to speak about holidays, e.g.

• "What is the best holiday you have ever had?"  
• "Do you prefer to holiday on the beach, or have a more active holiday like cycling?  Explain"
• "Would you holiday in the UK or go overseas?    Why"

One of us had to speak to, "Have you ever had a disaster on holiday", which should elicit a humorous litany of woes, but had she asked me to speak, it would have upset the room. The most disastrous holiday I ever had ended at a quarter to one on 23 August 1996. When the disaster happened, the holiday ended. Another of the topic questions was, "would you take out holiday insurance?" That August we had insurance as usual, but only for the usual four out of the five of our party, and I had to pay out a couple of hundred pounds to get one of us home!  Do I need to assure you that now I always have insurance?

The last topic was open to the room, "has anyone gone abroad on Xmas day?".  Yes - and that was probably one of my most memorable holiday, if only because it was the first one I had away from my parents and family when I was 22.  Booked in summer, whilst suffering from a party-induced hangover, my housemate and I flew to an Austrian skiing resort, Mayerhofen.  Housemate got all the gear, onesie ski-suit, gloves, hat, and I, not knowing if I'd like it, wore my English weather water-proofs.  Housemate put on her skis for the first time in our first class, faced up the hill, stood up, and slid backwards, thus promptly falling over.  She went back to the hotel where she spent the rest of the week, kindly donating me her fantastic onesie, a  garment I wore there and then, and for many years after both skiing and later on winter gliding fields.  I discovered I loved skiing and had some aptitude for it. I spent Christmas lunch alone on the top of a mountain, outside an Austrian ski restaurant, eating my sandwich and enjoying the cold crisp wonderful Alpine air - a good Christmas holiday.

Competitions and competing

I am not competitive.

Around 18 months ago, anticipating my viva when I'll have to talk coherently about my research, I joined our local Toastmasters, a speech making club. I enjoy it because I meet pleasant people, listen to speeches about topics I know nothing about and learn from, and I only have a few minutes walk on a Monday night to get there. It's not competitive; it is supportive. We're all there to learn to speak better in public. The format of the evening is usually:

• introductions to club, visitors and procedures
• table topics
• prepared speeches
• break
• evaluation of table topics and speeches
• wind up

Occasionally club members compete with other clubs, but I don't do that. I don't want to compete, and that was what yesterday's table topics session was about - competing.

Table topics is where a member stands up, introduces a topic and then calls on other members to speak ad hoc for up to two minutes on a question of the table topics master's choice. Yesterday's questions were:

1. "Why do we compete?"
2. "It's the taking part that counts"
3. "You have taken part in"
4. "How competitive are you you?"
5. "What does taking part in competitions do for us?"

Paul said we compete because it's fun - but I think that's a man's approach. Sue said that the taking part counts and argued for a competitive spirit to win the team business or the whatever you're after. I kind of agree with her there, because when I play tae kwon do, if I have a soppy partner, it's no fun, and I'm not doing much. But then I drew the third question.

"Tell us about a competition that you have taken part in, or won"

Now I don't want to do tae kwo do competitions, but I'll take part. I'll have a go, like I'll have a go at table topics, but there's no way I'm going to win in tae kwon do because I'm too slow, too old and too weak and the only people I can beat up are the youngsters with a namby-pamby character. But I might make a decent attempt at a pattern, even though I dislike the sparring and apologise if I hit someone! So that's what I said at Toastmasters yesterday, and they liked my speech enough to vote me the best table topics speaker of the evening!

Am I competitive?