Chairman’s Blog Thursday 31st October 2013
20 present including Jenny Pritchard from Barclays Bank for a second time and Jason Powell, a Security Surveyor.
In David Plumley’s absence Brian Painter stood in as Education and Development Officer and delivered an interesting Ed Slot.
His theme was the 10 minute presentation and he managed to use the dreaded “D” word, that is Diversity. The high spot however was what I would call the “Stilton Effect”. This amounts to preparing your presentation a week before it is due, putting it in a drawer for five days, taking it out and re reading it. You will then be able to tell which bits have gone off and you finish up with a perfect finished article.
Mindful of ancient customs, the 60 second round had a theme, namely Halloween. Nightmare situations or other scary situations we have found ourselves in with customers and clients. Notable contributions included :-
Mark Buckley replacing candles with electric lights in a certain clients Transylvanian castle.
Nick Cooke with the quote of the meeting, “Some people get nervous when I am wondering round their house” I think you will have to revert to the glasses Nick.
Michael Adelizzi 38 years ago, as a fresh faced youngster, presumably with a full head of hair, inadvertently opened a drawer in a mortuary refrigerator. The ghoulish site that met him was an old lady with white hair…dead of course. He can’t have been that frightened though because he observed she was wearing carpet slippers so he must have opened the drawer all the way out.
Richard Reed trying to rearrange flights for a woman and her 5 children who had turned up at the airport a day late.
Brian Painter told of a house containing ghosts and ghoulies. His friend was apparently scared by the ghost and he was grabbed the other spiritual presence
Tina Walker was jumping on her broomstick to fly to aid of hard pressed business owners who would not otherwise be able to get home for bonfire night.
Kevin Radford, grasping the mantle of Bard of Hadleigh, delivered a clever little ditty covering Humpty Dumpty, scaffolding and the appropriate insurance that would have enabled the said HD to be put together again. No obvious link with Halloween other than the fact that getting your insurance wrong can be distinctly scary.
Pride of place in the Halloween stakes must go to Dean Caldron who renamed his business “Headstones” and told of properties to let containing black sofas, black carpets and black lace drapes!
It was Dean who was awarding the Oscar and it went to Paul Booth. He gave a fairly unconvincing reason for the award. We all know that the real reason is that Paul’s 60 seconds are invariably scary and this was really his day.
Although it is highly unlikely that Kevin Radford had applied the Stilton Test to his 10 minute presentation the Bard of Hadleigh produced his usual professional presentation of the benefits of RMK. In extolling the virtues of their independent status he produced the second most memorable quotation of the morning “no one tells us where to put it”…and by the way, did you know that he has favourites. His favourite insurance is commercial insurance. Now how scary is that!!
And so we finished off October with a very effective referrals and testimonials round. Next week Scott will have the precise figures for us as to recorded business passed. Already we know it will be a record month.
I cannot close this Blog without making some mention of “New Member November in October”. I had not quite grasped the relevance of this title. The bringing of visitors in this month will hopefully result in new members in November. Congratulations to all of those who brought visitors.
For those of you who have not brought visitors this month, do not let that stop you from bringing them in November. Next week’s meeting will require those members to either :-
- Bring a visitor
- Make a £10 donation to charity or
- Wear the dreaded dress as already modelled by Brian Painter.
A final plea to all members, unless you are on your death bed or otherwise genuinely indisposed please make every effort to be there and try and make our first November meeting a lively one.
This was a really enjoyable meeting with plenty of amusing 60 seconds and an excellent 10 minutes – I thought I qualified because I couldnt think of anything more scary than bieng trapped in a room with somebody talking about Insurance , other than perhaps accounting . i noticed in the photo that I have a tendancy to lean to the left – Is that something I should see Brian about. Well done Aidan on another entertaining piece.
Yes I thought it was another good meeting. Lets hope that we can use November to convert some of Octobers guests into new members.
good meeting/presentation from Kevin I think I am going to have to wear a dress next week if it fits me
Ah – the stilton effect. Remember that age is not important unless you’re a cheese!
Great meeting as always and great 10 minutes of Kevin R. I can’t wait to see all you men in dresses LOL have a good weekend.
Great meeting and another excellent 10 minutes from Kevin. It would be good to see more members back next week as well as of course visitors.
Our usual mix of good banter and great business and a record monthly total is already guaranteed, fantastic!!
A very well planned Ed Slot from Brian and some clever 60 seconds – another good ‘un guys.
When Brian was delivering the excellent ed slot I was thinking I wish he had told me that a week ago!
Another good meeting with a deadly 60sec subject. Well done Kevin on your presentation you managed to hold everyone’s attention for a whole 8.57secs before I could see twitching feet. Who said insurance is boring ?
Excellent meeting and looking forward to seeing all of those guests next week or all those men in dresses!!
8.57 seconds it’s a new record