Ellee Seymour

You may have noticed that a side panel with my Toastmasters speeches has vanished. That is because I am no longer preparing them in the same way. And they had been there a while anyway and were pretty old.

I used to write my speeches in full and learn them almost word for word. But that is not what public speaking is about.  My personal challenge is to present a confident speech by learning it from a few words written on a card as a prompt. That is what I am doing now in preparation for next Tuesday when I go to Cambridge Speakers’ Club. I am going to speak about a holiday I once had where I met lots of interesting people. All I need to do is remind myself of some of the facts, so it isn’t a difficult topic.

The delivery of Dan Hannan’s powerful speech – which has had more than 2 million hits on YouTube – demonstrated the amazing impact a confident speech can have. It is a skill I would love to excel at. And I know it takes practice, and then more practice.

I think I need to work on improving my eye contact. I concentrate so much on remembering what I have to say that I forget about everything else that is important, such body language, the pauses – and smiling!

Wish me luck.

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I thought you might be interested in having a look at some scenes I recorded of the European Parliament in Brussels. When I last visited four years ago, there was much building work taking place to provide accommodation for MEPs and staff from the new eastern European countries.

That has now been completed and two new office blocks are linked to the main Altiero Spinelli building on Rue Wiertz by a circular path which you will be able to follow. You will see an old facade at the beginning of the film. This belonged to an old railway station and as a treasured monument, it had to remain and the Parliament was built around it.

There is an amazing giant steel sculture in the atrium and I have included some of my favourite fixtures, the wall lights by the lifts and post boxes.

Here is a link to another video I made with Ruth who was on a visit to Robert Sturdy’s office from Defra. I like the cafe you can see with its different coloured seats which break up the beige blandness – and the freshly squeezed orange juice is delicious!

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