Reg Cooper chaired the meeting and introduced the two Davids who gave speeches to the theme ‘if only….’ David Heaton spoke to the assignment ‘audience rapport’ and after a brief introduction progressed to his recent yoga holiday in Turkey, informing us that he was the only male amongst 12 women! His speech was laced with humour, lots of word pictures and had good audience rapport which was the main object of the excercise. Frank Grace evaluated the speech and considered that he had done enough to proceed to the next assignment in the speakers guide. David Preshaw’s assignment was to ‘visual aids’ and he gave us a history the Quaker movement along with the appropriate visual aids, some quite unusual, a cobblers last and some old socks! Anna Wilson evaluated his speech and asked him to move onto the next assignment.The ‘Topics Session’ was chaired by Mike George who asked members in turn to speak for up to 3 minutes on either contadictary proverbs or trying to sell him something.Some members opted for the big sell, Frank tried hard to sell him a grandfather clock, David preshaw, a rusty old bike, whilst Reg spoke about ‘great minds think alike’ and ‘fools seldom differ’ Anna, usually so competant could only manage a minute with her proverbs ‘look before you leap’ and ‘he who hesitates….’ before drying up! The others tried manfully to speak for 3 minutes with mixed results! One of the more challenging topic sessions I thought, for the members, normally so proficient, really struggled at times. Frank Grace  as president then dealt with the business session, arranging for a committee meeting to discuss several matters including recruitment, the ‘training evening’ on 29th October and the debate with Carlisle Speakers Club on 4th October.  Jess Longrigg evaluated the evening, high-lighting the good points  humour, once more! the speeches and evaluations and mentioned the duifficult topics chosen by Mike. Frank closed the meeting at 9.45pm