We began the evening with a warm up session introduced by the chairperson, Deborah Percy. She asked everyone to share something they liked that came from Europe. Most of the club members mentioned the variety of food that comes from across the channel.

Amina Abdulla delivered the first speech of the evening entitled Leading the Way. She enthusiastically shared her love of BMW cars with a very interesting potted history. She told us they still make all the parts, and parts from different cars go together, so restoring old BMWs is almost as easy as assembling Lego.

Trevor Kenning’s speech entitled Places that involve Ray in Scandals was about his personal history with crossword puzzles. In his evaluation, Doug Weale described this as a showpiece speech.

After the interval, Trevor introduced a session of Round Robin Topics for two-minute impromptu speeches. This resulted in a random match of people with titles, and each speaker had to introduce the next speaker and give them a subject. The session provided everyone with the opportunity to be chairperson for a brief part of the evening. Topics included Stay-at-home fathers, Your favourite building in Thanet and What advice would you give your younger self. Amina Abdulla won the competition for her impromptu speech on the subject money talks. She entertained us with an experience of queue jumping in Kenya.

The meetings are on the second and fourth Thursday of the month at the Royal Temple Yacht Club, Ramsgate. For more information find us on social media or contact Deb Percy on 01843 607192.