Thursday, February 18, 2016
My Winning Speeches, books, ribbons, stories, photos: Why I keep records.
In previous years I have lost track of the number of ribbons I won and at which clubs. Why does it matter?
1 Counting Books You've Read and Reviewed
I counted the number of books I read in a year at Grammar School when one of the English teachers gave us a pocket sized notebook and asked us to write a review of a book we wrote on each page. I set myself the task of filling the notebook, reading a book every week, and reading more books in year two than in year one.
If I still kept this notebook system and re-read it at odd moments, as entertainment when waiting at bus stops, train stations and airports, I would be in a better position to answer the (on the) table topic for (impromptu) speeches at meetings.
2 Recording Titles and Authors
When I first did table topics I could never answer the question: What is your favourite book and why? I had too many books. Now the answer is simple. My favourite fiction book is Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, because it has a twist ending in each of the chapters.
2 Counting And Recording Photos
I used to wonder why composers gave their orchestral pieces numbers as well as names. Beethoven's Fifth, and so on. Then I met the head of a photographic society in New Zealand who had a basement room with stack os photos. He said he numbered all photos in date order by year. He kept indexes by country and subject, using the photo number to find the photo. So the first photo he took in the year 1950 would be number one. He would have a list of photos taken in New Zealand, starting with that number one photo. Another list of photos of skiing might also begin with that number one photo.
3 Counting and Recording Short Stories
When I started writing short stories I started by storing them alphabetically. But I kept changing the titles. It then became easier to store them in date order. This week's and last week's stories were easy to find.
4 Duplicate Filing
When I worked in the British Council we kept everything duplicate filed. One copy of every letter went into a subject file. The second copy was in a day file. If you did not know where the letter was filed, or it was missing, or misfiled, you could check the date file.
5 Counting and Recording Speeches
Counting and recording speeches is handy. One speaker I met at a hotel seemed very well organised. He gave a speech at a nearby restaurant table at Christmas). He told me he gave many speeches to clubs, often two a year. he had a card index on which he wrote the title of the speech he gave, the date, and the stories and jokes he told. When invited to give a second speech in one year, he took a second card and gave a speech of a different subject with different stories. However, a year later he felt he could repeat the first speech. Some of the audience would be different and most people would have forgotten.
6 Statistics Of Articles Written
I never bothered with statistics to tell others. I did count the number of travel article I wrote in a year. I managed an average of only about 8-16 a year. I wanted to reach one a week. the maximum number of times I resumed the same story was four times. I usually spent one week on admin, researching a trip or press trip, then one week away. One week on filing, writing, sending off the finished article and photos, making revisions on request. One week post-writing on thank yous, filing, and so on.
Then I went to a lecture on travel writing given by another writer. She proudly claimed, "I have written over 100 travel articles."
I thought, "I must have done more than that. I've written about ten articles a year for more than ten years. She had made herself sound an expert, very important, not just by the quality of the places her work had appeared, but simply on numbers.
I then realised that I could boost my own ego in slack periods, as well as giving myself a more impressive CV and introduction when speaking.
Count statistics. Have you won three prizes for speaking? I have more than 50 ribbons for best speaker or best impromptu speaker or best evaluator, in the UK. Another ten or so in Singapore.
Look for statistics in every business or hobby. When you start a business or talk about your hobby. How many wine bottles do you have? How many stamps have you collected? How many books have you read or written. How many houses have you sold? How many flats have you rented? How many countries have you visited? How many mountains have you climbed? How many cars have you owned, bought, sold? How many trees are in your garden?
When you fill out a questionnaire you are asked about your lifestyle. How many times a week, month or year do you eat out at restaurants? How many mobile phones have you owned? How many times have you made a home cooked Christmas pudding? Only once - never again? Or for fifty years?
How many husbands and wives or girlfriends have you had? How many times have you proposed marriage and been turned down. You can make a positive out of a negative. Cosmo Landesman was billed in the Sunday Times as having proposed marriage five times and been turned down and still looking.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, speech writer and performer, researcher and author.
1 Counting Books You've Read and Reviewed
I counted the number of books I read in a year at Grammar School when one of the English teachers gave us a pocket sized notebook and asked us to write a review of a book we wrote on each page. I set myself the task of filling the notebook, reading a book every week, and reading more books in year two than in year one.
If I still kept this notebook system and re-read it at odd moments, as entertainment when waiting at bus stops, train stations and airports, I would be in a better position to answer the (on the) table topic for (impromptu) speeches at meetings.
2 Recording Titles and Authors
When I first did table topics I could never answer the question: What is your favourite book and why? I had too many books. Now the answer is simple. My favourite fiction book is Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson, because it has a twist ending in each of the chapters.
2 Counting And Recording Photos
I used to wonder why composers gave their orchestral pieces numbers as well as names. Beethoven's Fifth, and so on. Then I met the head of a photographic society in New Zealand who had a basement room with stack os photos. He said he numbered all photos in date order by year. He kept indexes by country and subject, using the photo number to find the photo. So the first photo he took in the year 1950 would be number one. He would have a list of photos taken in New Zealand, starting with that number one photo. Another list of photos of skiing might also begin with that number one photo.
3 Counting and Recording Short Stories
When I started writing short stories I started by storing them alphabetically. But I kept changing the titles. It then became easier to store them in date order. This week's and last week's stories were easy to find.
4 Duplicate Filing
When I worked in the British Council we kept everything duplicate filed. One copy of every letter went into a subject file. The second copy was in a day file. If you did not know where the letter was filed, or it was missing, or misfiled, you could check the date file.
5 Counting and Recording Speeches
Counting and recording speeches is handy. One speaker I met at a hotel seemed very well organised. He gave a speech at a nearby restaurant table at Christmas). He told me he gave many speeches to clubs, often two a year. he had a card index on which he wrote the title of the speech he gave, the date, and the stories and jokes he told. When invited to give a second speech in one year, he took a second card and gave a speech of a different subject with different stories. However, a year later he felt he could repeat the first speech. Some of the audience would be different and most people would have forgotten.
6 Statistics Of Articles Written
I never bothered with statistics to tell others. I did count the number of travel article I wrote in a year. I managed an average of only about 8-16 a year. I wanted to reach one a week. the maximum number of times I resumed the same story was four times. I usually spent one week on admin, researching a trip or press trip, then one week away. One week on filing, writing, sending off the finished article and photos, making revisions on request. One week post-writing on thank yous, filing, and so on.
Then I went to a lecture on travel writing given by another writer. She proudly claimed, "I have written over 100 travel articles."
I thought, "I must have done more than that. I've written about ten articles a year for more than ten years. She had made herself sound an expert, very important, not just by the quality of the places her work had appeared, but simply on numbers.
I then realised that I could boost my own ego in slack periods, as well as giving myself a more impressive CV and introduction when speaking.
Count statistics. Have you won three prizes for speaking? I have more than 50 ribbons for best speaker or best impromptu speaker or best evaluator, in the UK. Another ten or so in Singapore.
Look for statistics in every business or hobby. When you start a business or talk about your hobby. How many wine bottles do you have? How many stamps have you collected? How many books have you read or written. How many houses have you sold? How many flats have you rented? How many countries have you visited? How many mountains have you climbed? How many cars have you owned, bought, sold? How many trees are in your garden?
When you fill out a questionnaire you are asked about your lifestyle. How many times a week, month or year do you eat out at restaurants? How many mobile phones have you owned? How many times have you made a home cooked Christmas pudding? Only once - never again? Or for fifty years?
How many husbands and wives or girlfriends have you had? How many times have you proposed marriage and been turned down. You can make a positive out of a negative. Cosmo Landesman was billed in the Sunday Times as having proposed marriage five times and been turned down and still looking.
Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, speech writer and performer, researcher and author.
Labels: authors, Bukit Panjang, Counting books, Harrovians, photos, recording titles, RSPB, short stories, speeches
Monday, December 08, 2014
Why quote quotations in speeches?
Author Eric Webster started every chapter of his books with quotations. I remember typing them out for him when I was his PA in the last year of his life at Pembertons Advertising Agency which became Colman Prentis and Varley. I sat typing in an office overlooking Baker Street station and the spot where a statue of Sherlock Holmes now stands.
Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character but based on a real person. Why do we quote him? What does quotation do for us?
'Elementary, dear Watson,' we would have said, laughing, if we had seen the statue. Eric was the author of a best-selling practical book, How To Win The Business Battle, which is alliterative.
What does this quotation do for us? It is short, succinct, easy to remember. It makes us feel confident, superior, successful. The detective has been faced with a problem and he has solved it, for himself and others. He has established his credentials.
By quoting another expert, we appeal to a higher authority, somebody more famous. We can quote an unknown person, somebody we value, such as our mother, somebody older and wiser, our grandmother who taught us a memorable lesson when we were a child.
What have other famous people said about quotations?
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
George Bernard Shaw.
Angela Lansbury
Author of
Quick Quotations (Lulu.com)
Who Said What When? (Lulu.com)
Sherlock Holmes was a fictional character but based on a real person. Why do we quote him? What does quotation do for us?
'Elementary, dear Watson,' we would have said, laughing, if we had seen the statue. Eric was the author of a best-selling practical book, How To Win The Business Battle, which is alliterative.
What does this quotation do for us? It is short, succinct, easy to remember. It makes us feel confident, superior, successful. The detective has been faced with a problem and he has solved it, for himself and others. He has established his credentials.
By quoting another expert, we appeal to a higher authority, somebody more famous. We can quote an unknown person, somebody we value, such as our mother, somebody older and wiser, our grandmother who taught us a memorable lesson when we were a child.
What have other famous people said about quotations?
I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.
George Bernard Shaw.
Angela Lansbury
Author of
Quick Quotations (Lulu.com)
Who Said What When? (Lulu.com)
Labels: author, Baker Street, Bernard Shaw, credentials, Eric Webster, How to Win The Business Battle, quotations, Sherlock Holmes statue, speeches, Watson
Thursday, July 10, 2008
ANGELA LANSBURY’S TOASTMASTERS SPEECHES & PRIZES
I just made a list of ribbons which I had won for speeches.
I had 12 ribbons: 2 for completing 1st and 10th speeches; 3 for evaluations; 7 for impromptu speeches. But none for planned speeches!
2 Shanghai 2006 ‘Is computer dating and blind dating good?’ (Yes - except for my blind date with a bearded man - there was one on the restaurant doorstep, 3 inside ...)
I just made a list of ribbons which I had won for speeches.
First I wanted to know how many ribbons I had for each type of speech. A few days ago I had won a ribbon for evaluating.
I had a new ribbon to put in a frame. I used to write on the back of the ribbon the place, date and subject. But now it seems easier to write on the front. Although it defaces the ribbon, once you have two or three or four in a frame they all look the same. I want to remember when I won them, and where.
I had twelve ribbons, but I don't count the ones for the first speech and the tenth speech. They are rewards for milestones, for numbers of speeches given, quantity not quality.
Look at what I discovered about my ribbons.
I had 12 ribbons: 2 for completing 1st and 10th speeches; 3 for evaluations; 7 for impromptu speeches. But none for planned speeches!
Clearly my most successful performances are impromptu speeches. So I should continue with my plans to do stand-up comedy.
Ribbons
For completed speeches (2)
1 Ice Breaker (First speech) Harrovians 2004 (& HOD 2004)
2 CTM (Tenth speech) Harrovians
Ribbons for Best Table Topics
1 Holborn, UK, 8/11/2005 ‘Speak for turkeys at Christmas.’ Remember the turkey which escaped from the overturned lorry? As PR I had turkeys on TV but they ran away, all over the set, amongst the audience, like this (making noise and fIapping wings I gallop down the aisle back to my seat) ...’
Ribbons
For completed speeches (2)
1 Ice Breaker (First speech) Harrovians 2004 (& HOD 2004)
2 CTM (Tenth speech) Harrovians
Ribbons for Best Table Topics
1 Holborn, UK, 8/11/2005 ‘Speak for turkeys at Christmas.’ Remember the turkey which escaped from the overturned lorry? As PR I had turkeys on TV but they ran away, all over the set, amongst the audience, like this (making noise and fIapping wings I gallop down the aisle back to my seat) ...’
2 Shanghai 2006 ‘Is computer dating and blind dating good?’ (Yes - except for my blind date with a bearded man - there was one on the restaurant doorstep, 3 inside ...)
3 Shanghai 2006 ‘How would you sell a bicycle which supports a ladder?’ (Illustrated) ‘I’d say: use it to hang washing in trees; be seen in traffic when meeting your friends.’
4 Harrovians 2007 ‘Thatcher said, “Ask a man to speak but ask a women to get something done”. Do you agree?’ (Yes, but father was action man and my mother did all the talking - because my father was deaf; after she died I did the talking and found out he’d been deaf for years.)
5 Harrovians Jul 2007 ‘Is Computer Dating successful?’ (Yes, I’m on 40 dating sites, under different names. I date men with viagra and heart bypasses and hopeful virgins.)
6 Harrovians Aug 6 2007 ‘How does a blind baby make sense of the world?’ (Sniffs the Toastmaster; feels the beard of a man in the audience, pats his shoulders and waist ...)
7 Harrovians July 2008 ‘Should we tax the rich?’ (No. they’ll emigrate. Make the rich run on treadmills in gyms to power buildings. You in the audience could be powering light bulbs, please stamp your feet.)
Ribbons for Best Evaluator
1 Singapore Props 2006 Company club evaluated Chinese girl speaker who acted an old and a young man. (I recommended props - baseball cap for younger man. She did not know what props were.)
Ribbons for Best Evaluator
1 Singapore Props 2006 Company club evaluated Chinese girl speaker who acted an old and a young man. (I recommended props - baseball cap for younger man. She did not know what props were.)
2 HOD June 22 2006
3 Harrovians July 7 2008 Evaluated Warren Sheng facing a hostile audience. (He bravely got Shirley to heckle and throw water, which was convincing, ‘she’s that type of person’ and he did not get angry but got the audience on his side.)
I belong to Harrovians and HOD clubs in London. Both of them give you ribbons. But Holborn club in central London also gives you a certificate showing the club and date. I think that's a good idea. It saves you having to spoil the ribbon by writing on it, or having to type and print your own caption. Or forgetting where and when you won the ribbons.
I had made a list on the back of my Toastmasters manual of the competitions I'd entered and won. Then I added a list of ribbons.
I hope to persuade Harrovians speakers' club to start printing mini certificates to go with the colourful red or white ribbons with the glamorous gold lettering. The committee are a bit doubtful about this idea.
They were thinking of giving a certificate for the fifth speech. Then decided that the sixth was a milestone. So if you had a certificate with every ribbon, a certificate for the sixth speech would not be appreciated so much.
I think it would be. If a ribbon is always special, so is a certificate. Just as you get ribbons for best speech as well as for 10th speech, you can have certificates if you are voted best speaker, as well as for doing your sixth speech.
The alternative is to give a larger A4 certificate for the 6th speech. Or a small A5 certificate for the 6th speech and larger A4 certificates for prize-winning speeches.
If you win certificates or ribbons or trophies for speeches or anything else, it is good to have a record. When I am listed as a speaker in speakers' bureau or agency, it will be advantageous and prestigious to be able to say how many ribbons I have won.
Labels: Angela Lansbury, frame, prizes, ribbons, speeches, Toastmasters
Friday, June 16, 2006
Impromptu Speech Success Recipes
SPEECHES
Angela's Advice
How to talk about a subject you know nothing about
If you are going to the AGM and you hold a post, you should have an account of what you have done - especially if you are an accountant. An accountant is expected to be able to quote figures of profit and loss, statistics, no muttering, "Um, I have to check". Similarly, those of use called to speak on a subject we know nothing about have to speak confidently.
A politician may face such a challenge from hecklers. he starts to speak about a subject he knows, something con-controversial. Then a speaker calls out a question on a subject which he knows nothing about or doesn't want to talk about. "Hey - what about the workers!" Maybe that's why hecklers are sometimes ejected.
A politician may face such a challenge from hecklers. he starts to speak about a subject he knows, something con-controversial. Then a speaker calls out a question on a subject which he knows nothing about or doesn't want to talk about. "Hey - what about the workers!" Maybe that's why hecklers are sometimes ejected.
Plan Speeches On Frequent Themes
In Toastmasters we practice at speaking confidently without notes, by being called up to speak after a subject is announced, usually with no indication of the subject. Sometimes we are told the theme of the evening in advance.
Let's suppose you are asked to speak about a subject you know nothing about, which in my case would be finance or football or skiing.
Outsiders Such As Non Skiers
You are an outsider. Some of the audience may be outsiders. One trick is to talk about how outsiders cope. This could be serious. It could be funny. It could be both. And it often makes an orginal speech.
For example, what do Jews do at Christmas? Where do skiers go in summer? What do football fans do on World Cup night - and what do non football fans do?
Angela Lansbury, ACG, CL, member of Harrovians and HOD Toastmasters International clubs in London and Braddell Heights Advanced club in Singapore.
Labels: accountant, AGM, Christmas, finance, football. skiing, funny, Jews, notes, politician, serious, speeches, theme
