Early birds speakers

Today, I went to London before the dawn, out of the house just after five in the morning. The light was up, but just barely when I arrived the Lancaster Square, near which the Early birds speakers club holds its meeting, every Thursday morning at seven.

Because I did not know yet, how to go better, I believed the change at the Green Park Tube station would be faster, instead, I had a long corridor in form of a Tube: but I took great picture there. And also, arriving too early, a lot of images of the St. Martin's Lane, which is simply a Theater lane between the National Portrait Gallery (near Trafalgar Square) and Leicester Square.

I learned a lot in a few minutes of the meeting. Each club is different, and some of how they did, I would like to see in our club also. They all had huge etiquettes prepared with their names, for example. And a special speech "to learn something useful" : this time it was about Voice.

We had also a wonderful Chair, The Toastmaster of the Morning (not Evening): George Metcalfe, what a wonderful enchanting smile while he introduced and listened to the other speakers! And also some very good, very useful advices!

It seems, there is the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of the Human Rights, I do understand so well now, why the Soviet Union and Satellites did not join and when they joined of course, they did not respect it.

We had a table topics about some of the points: each mentioned was not respected in the Communist Romania where I lived that time.

We were not born equals: I was considered born from "bourgeois" parents, which was enough not to let me go to university. Middle class parent's children were not equals of worker's class one, who were considered better.

People could be arrested, and one never knew where they were taken, as for my father for seven month. They could not defend themselves, they were considered guilty as soon as some one, wanting for example their place of work "denounced" them.

He was not effectively tortured, but his cell mate was burned day by day, to tell where he had hidden his jewels. My father was "only" taken night by night and instead of sleeping, asked to say again and again his story, answer to the same questions.

I could not tell any of them, because only a few old were asked (or those they knew already better) to answer at the Table Topics. But I would have had what to tell!

I have yet lot of tales to tell and I'll try to do so with time.

Tube slide show, with 21 images, can be seen HERE.