Swanage Ladies Luncheon Club

My fourth talk in Swanage this year was for the Ladies Luncheon Club on 19 November, two years after my last booking for them. The Sandbanks ferry was out of service due to maintenance work so the bus had to travel the whole distance from Bournemouth by land (hence the appalling punning title of this post!) but I arrived at the Grand Hotel in good time for my 11.15 start.

There were about 45 ladies at the meeting and the talk this time was my most recent addition, I Must Write That Down! (A Commonplace Book). I was conscious of the fact that a few of them would already have heard me deliver it at Durlston WI back in January but this is a new-ish presentation which is still evolving so this version did at least include the odd item which was unfamiliar to them.

Public Speaking Tip #266: It's always a little tricky when you know there are audience members who have heard the same material elsewhere; you don't want to bore them but at the same time you may not wish to change content which works well just for the sake of a few. My suggestion would be to make any revisions which you may have been considering anyway so that at least parts of it will be different.

The talk went well apart from a coughing fit (mine - it's that time of year again!). Nobody had any lozenges but a couple of the ladies provided me with Polo Mints and Werther's Butterscotch and this mini-confectionery stall seemed to get me through the rest of it! After a question and answer session, I enjoyed a very nice lunch with the club and we then chatted over coffee while enjoying the excellent sea views from the hotel.

One of the great things about visiting so many places as a speaker is the wealth of local knowledge available to me. For example, I knew that back in the 1940s/1950s, my late grandmother had worked as a cake maker at a bakery in Swanage called the Rose House but I was never sure where this had been located. By asking around at this club, I soon found a lady who was able to tell me.

Public Speaking Tip #267: If you speak to a wide range of groups, you will find audience members who are able to answer your questions and sometimes even help you with problems. Just one more reason to become a public speaker!

As with my last visit, I wasn't able to walk up to Peveril Point, not because of the weather this time but because I had to head back for an evening booking in another part of Dorset. I also noticed that for some reason, again as with my previous time there, a visit to Swanage seemed to disable the signal on my Blackberry for a couple of hours!