Titanic Belfast was looking unbelievably stunning on our Dock Walk on Sunday – just as we set off from the Odyssey a shaft of evening sunlight pierced the low storm-clouds and glinted off the cladding of the building:

See what I did there?  I started off an article about Titanic Belfast on a positive note.  It seems to be something that’s beyond most members of the press this week.  An “interesting” weekend in the media started with reports on Friday with the attention-grabbing headline “Titanic project faces EU grant shortfall”!   (if you want to read the article it’s here but, as you’ll see, I really don’t recommend it.)  I was umm-ing and ahh-ing about whether to comment on this blog, but at speaking engagements over the last few days, the first question most people have been asking is, “So, this Titanic thing’s got a £20 million shortfall, has it?”

And the answer is, emphatically, no, as this article (which you really should read) makes clear.  Funding which can be drawn down as necessary, rather than being banked in advance, is not a shortfall, surely.  But where’s the exciting headline in that?  So, yet again, a widely-reported cheap shot has given the TQ’s armchair critics another bit of unfounded ammo.  Still, it’ll be nice to see how the media redress the balance by printing the truth, nice and loud and clear, won’t it?   …won’t it?

So just as I was starting to mutter darkly about the press and their wicked ways, grumble grumble, I turned to (of all things) the Sunday Times, usually my bastion for reasonably sane perspectives on the world, only to find a grumpy, it’ll-never-work hatchet job on Titanic Belfast.  It’s our old friend the ‘Belfast But’ again.  Even before the place is open (and certainly, judging from the article, without having visited the site recently), it’s written off without being given a chance.  It makes me very ANGRY! and I’d love, love to be able to show the writer of the article around the TQ and share why it makes me so excited.  There are good, solid reasons why most of his complaints and objections aren’t necessarily the case.  (Don’t worry, I’ll not go into them here – don’t get me started…)

The problem with the Belfast But is that it can become a self-fulfiling prophecy.  Decide on failure and you’ll make it happen.  Decide that something beautiful, visionary, unprecedented is happening and can happen in Belfast, and…

So it’s time to get to work, people of The Dock!  This is the battle of the jungle drums.  The old drumbeat of our province has been: we’re stuck, no change, it won’t work, just give up.  Time to start beating out a new rhythm: hope is here, we can change, it is happening, it’s our time…  C’mon!

And it’s up to you and me.  The people building Titanic Belfast, transforming the slipways, preparing the exhibitions, restoring the Nomadic, planning, prepping and worrying about 1001 details – they’re doing a fantastic job.  But they depend on the jungle drums of the rest of the city and the province to build the excitement and the momentum.  Are you telling all your friends and relatives that 2012 is the year they have to visit Belfast, to see our little city shine brighter than it’s ever shone before?  Are you spreading the word, talking it up?  Have you checked out the Titanic Belfast website, to luxuriate in some fantastic photography of the construction of the building – and to book your place on Day One of this new era?

Because today is when it all begins:  the tickets are now on sale.  I’ve just bought a couple for the opening day, and if you’re quick you can get some too.  (The first tour is already sold out as I write.)  Get some tickets for your family as Christmas presents – and hey, get some tickets for yourself as well.  Because this is good news, and it’s happening.

So let’s finish off with some of the good news we’ve seen reported over the past week: