Chris Worfolk's Blog

A few weeks ago we headed up to Skipton for Yarndale – a festival of yarn. It was huge. They had rented out a sheep auction warehouse and most of it was full of people selling wool and wool related products.

This notice was in a broken lift in Manchester. It was clearly broken due to the number of signs around it and the fact that the doors were held open. But they also felt the need to post an “urgent” notice.

I’m not quite sure what was urgent about it. Though they have put it in quote marks, so maybe they don’t know either.

After the last series of desk moves, I’ve found myself facing into the sun. There are blinds, but they’re ineffective, so to prevent myself from behind blinded I’ve had to carefully erect my umbrella to provide a sun screen. Feels like such a stereotype.

On the last Sunday of September, we held the Area 15 contest for humorous speaking and table topics. The competition was tough and all competitors did a great job – congratulations to all that took part!

Despite having lost at the club contest, only to win through at White Rose, I somehow came out on top in humorous speaking. Two contestants go through to Division so Jamie will be joining me with a speech entitled “The TM 2 1 3 1” as well.

Chanaka once again stormed through the Table Topics and will be going to the division contest alongside Michael who also gave an excellent speech. I’m also pleased to say Michael took home the Toastmaster of the Year award for his ever-present hard work for the area.

When I read the Wikipedia page on this novel, it described it as being on of the greatest works of literary nonsense ever written. High praise indeed.

The title is often shortened to Alice in Wonderland, which lets be honest, is a far snappier title. Though not technically a correct one. The film adaptation released a few years ago also chose to shorten the name.

As a children’s book, it was a relatively short read and kept the pace moving along at a good pace so even I didn’t get too bored any any point. It does leave you thinking that real life is rather boring though.

Having been watching the TV series, I’ve also been reading the book as well.

It’s not been a bad read, but I really think it speaks highly of the TV series that actually includes most of the details.

Sadly, I can’t think of a better example than Harry Potter. But if you take Harry Potter, the novels are great because they contain large story arcs and extra details that are entirely missing from the films. I didn’t find this to be the case with A Game of Thrones – the TV series has covered pretty much all the book.

As I’ve said, that isn’t really a fault of the book though, which was definitely worth a read.

As part of Leeds Business Week, the Leeds Toastmasters clubs came together to put on an event “Pitch Perfect”. It turned out to be a huge success with positive feedback from many of our participants and lots of interests in the clubs. Congratulations to Pierre and everyone else involved in bringing it together.

For our September meeting, Ian Bushfield presented a talk entitled “Skeptics with an Eh: A view of the Canadian Skeptical movement”.

Earlier this month we had our club speech contest. Our Immediate Past President Jude begun with a speech entitled “When The Going Gets Tough”.

I followed with my speech “The Man Who Couldn’t Stop Evaluating”.

But our winner was Michael J. Clarke with a speech entitled “Never Say No”.

Earlier this year, Leeds got it’s own Speakers’ Corner. Thanks to Elina is now has it’s own website too. If you want to keep up with all the latest updates by subscribing to the mailing list, see the Speakers’ Corner Leeds website. It’s one of the few groups I’m not running lol.