Mind you there were lots of other Christmas candles blazing – our Toastmaster, Christopher Bell, had us building up to a practice standing ovation; great stuff. Our Timekeeper, Jerry Arulandu (another excellent contributor) offered us a quotation -“Don't say you don't have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” (H Jackson Brown). The Grammarian (myself) offered robust (“strong and hardy, full of health, vigorous in mind or voice”) in 550 point text (really – one letter per page) as the word of the day and the speakers made brilliant and regular use of it.

Robert’s Christmas themed table topics challenged Ron Rosenhead (devise a new Christmas Tradition – Ron’s solution “being robustly miserable”), Albigail L (her Santa’s gift for Boris was a suggestion: a better transport system), Inka Kretschmer (she wished Gordon Brown a “very long holiday very far away”), Robin (who shared his feeling that the worst possible gift was something recycled), Simon Cooper (who felt the first sign of Christmas was buying next year’s presents in the New Year sales), our guest from Singapore, Gerald (who shared his hatred for the crazy world of Christmas), joint winner Vicky Charles (who spoke up for unloved Christmas presents) and guest and joint winner Fritz Andoh (who revealed his main non-Xmas celebration was the ongoing festival of being with his girlfriend).

We had 3 prepared speeches. Peter Charles gave us his CC1 (and winning) speech “The cautionary tale of Nick and Jake” (evaluated by Omo Alokwe), a splendid evocation of a period and genre, dripping with Blues and celebrating the power of strong presentation. David Healy presented his CC6 speech “Unnecessary Noise” (evaluated by Rose Sawkins), featuring an old man with a bell, lots of tense build up to the punch line and his 3 year old daughter. Rona Harding completed the group with her CC7 speech “Life After Life” (evaluated by Simon Cooper), and shared some of her personal beliefs and an extraordinary story with us. Definitely a group of Christmas crackers.

Our general evaluator was guest Santa Roger Harding who managed to combine helpful ideas, spot on praise  and extreme robustness in wrapping up the evening in coloured paper and sparkly stuff.