Launch of my new Titanic Speech in Cirencester

Another very busy day today.  I spent the morning making sure that the Titanic talk for this afternoon was well prepared with some last minute changes to the slides and additional notes.  I picked Richard up at around 12.15 p.m. in my car and we set off for Cirencester arriving at about 1.30 p.m.  The hall where I was due to speak was, in fact, a URC church and instead of the 30-40 audience I was expecting found seating set out for over 100!  Therese, my cousin twice removed, greeted me as the Speaker Finder for the University of the Third Age whom I was to address.  Obviously the topic, Titanic, was extremely popular and we had a full audience.  I found myself speaking up in front of the altar and Richard operated the audio-visual equipment.  We hoped to be able to link the laptop up to the fixed ceiling projector but we couldn't find the correct connections.  With only ten minutes to go we had to abandon the attempt when the "technical adviser" announced that he did "sound" and not the visual side of the presentations.  We managed to erect a spare screen up in front of the altar to the side of where I was to speak and we kicked off in good time.  I spoke for about 50 minutes having to cut out a couple of videos due to time but seemed to keep the audience interested - in fact one lady said that this was the first talk in a long while in which she hadn't fallen asleep.  I enjoyed doing it although we had a couple of technical glitches and I actually forgot, for a moment, the name of the designer of Titanic!  I did remember it a couple of minutes later - Thomas Andrews who actually shares the same birthday as Tom.  I was delighted to receive a speaker's fee/expenses which I will put into my "church account".  Therese seemed well pleased with the presentation.  It was really hot inside the church and standing in front of 100 or so gave me a bit of a foretaste of what it is going to feel like when I come to preach in due course.  At least, with Titanic, I had a specialist knowledge which the majority of the audience didn't have and so was a bit in command.  A bit different when it comes to ideas on faith.