Volunteers make the world go round… Well that’s certainly true in Dock-World at any rate!

The Dock is now the profoundly proud, grateful and slightly surprised owner of a team of more than thirty fantastic volunteers who give from a couple of hours to a day per week – doing everything from coffee to dishes to cleaning to chatting, and a million other jobs in between.  They’re as enthusiastic about cleaning out Kate and Leo’s fish tank, as talking up Belfast to a tourist, or advising a customer on which Suki Tea to try.  They are awesome.

So last Saturday we closed the doors for one day only (the sad little faces of denied customers pressing their noses against the glass were heartbreaking – but they SHOULD’VE READ THE BLOG!) to hold a Volunteer Training Day – which was also a great excuse to all get to know each other and enjoy a bit of craic.

We were trained in Fire Safety by Robert – as you can see, Tegan is now a force to be reckoned with when brandishing a fire extinguisher.  Hopefully any future fire drill in The Dock won’t look like this:

And Oscar, the man behind Suki Tea, gave us a tea-tasting demonstration and introduced us to some new flavours – a brilliant experience and one which made me very proud that we’re supporting, in our small way, this brilliant, ethical local company:

As you can see behind Oscar in the pic, we have a new temporary display on the back wall of Dock Cafe – specially commissioned by the team at the Festival At Queens to show the work and love that went into the creation of Wish (aka the Face From Space.  I’m not giving up.)

Call in and have a look soon – the photography on display in Dock Cafe is, I think, the best way to see a variety of perspectives of The Face from the air (short of chartering a helicopter and flying above it yourself).

Some people who did get to see Wish from above were the groups of Bishops and church leaders from Glasgow, Liverpool and Hong Kong who’ve called in to the cafe over the last few days to chat about The Dock and go on a tour around the Titanic Quarter.  (I’ve tried not to overuse the phrase “As I was saying to the Archbishop of Hong Kong the other day…” ever since – is once an hour too much?)

And it was great to find out that even Archbishops are unable to walk the Titanic Slipways without instinctively adopting the ‘Titanic posture’!