Harfleur - One Country One World

It was a fabulous meeting at One Country One World. They are a great online club, and are genuinely international. I hope to revisit one day.

Unfortunately my own speech was the worst I've done in the run to date. Regular readers of the blog will know that I had concerns about its message and its possible reception, although with hindsight those were the least of my worries.

I'd prepared an introduction to the speech, on EasySpeak, which I've posted on the blog before but here it is again:

It's the first time I've ever written an intro that I thought might have more impact than the speech! As I expect you can tell, I've written that second paragraph for its rhetorical value not just because I thought a trigger warning was warranted. Also because whenever I've done a reading of the Harfleur speech to friends, nobody seems angry or upset by it - as would surely be the response of someone who understood what I was saying - so I considered the intro essential background for anyone who didn't already know a lot about my speech topic. So, for more-or-less the first time*, I had an intro which was an integral part of the speech. Speech intros aren't usually like that. It generally doesn't matter whether they are said or not.

*It's the second time. The actual first time went badly too. I'll save that story for another day.

The structure of the meeting was a bit alien to me. In another context I'd have enjoyed that - at One Country One World they have various unconventional roles like "inspiration master", "tourist of the day", "niche of the day" all of which were really enjoyable. But they confused me into getting into my speaking position about ten minutes or so before I was needed. I was feeling fairly confident that my intro would be used - not only had I put it on EasySpeak but I'd also been emailed by someone from the club a few hours before asking how to introduce me and I'd copied the wording to them, too. But it was getting too late to ask who would be introducing me and whether they had my wording and I resolved that if it wasn't used I'd have to read it myself then go back to my own material. Unfortunately I only had it available as a screenshot, and it was too late to print it out, so I just opened it on one of the two laptops I was using, and hoped it wouldn't be needed.

Unfortunately, it was. The TM introduced my speech just by saying which pathway it was from and its title: without any reference to the speedrun, which I took it she didn't know about, and, crucially for my talk, without the trigger warning.

I suppose I hadn't realised until this point how much I was relying on the assumption that someone else at the meeting will do what I'd expect them to do. That is always a mistake and I really should know better. Anyway, I then had to follow my resolution to do that part myself, which involved starting my speech by leaving my standing-up speaking position, pushing my chair back into place, reading my prepared wording from a screen outside the speaking area, then returning to where I had been. That also knocked my confidence quite severely. This isn't a memorised speech - just an important point that I wanted to make in my own words, backed by a reading: the sort of thing I'm capable of when feeling calm. And I was already about a minute (I don't really know how long) behind where I wanted to be when the speech started. Anyway, I muddled through it as best I could manage, cut short the reading as soon as I decently could, and sat back down.

I know one thing I skipped was my planned explanation of why I had decided to do a reading of this extract, rather than memorising and dramatising it as I had in other parts of the speedrun with other extracts from the same play.

To be honest I don't really like scripted speeches, but I don't think I'd try this one again without scripting it. If I did that I could incorporate the trigger warning into the script itself, perhaps just before the reading, rather than giving the most impactful bit to someone else.

It's a shame this one didn't go well. I do think there's an important message in there somewhere that I'm failing to communicate. 

Anyway, turning to Tim Blackburn's evaluation - I thought it was great - very detailed and constructive. I attach some extracts from the written evaluation below, and, to be honest, I think almost all of these points would have been pertinent to the speech as I intended to give it: