Earlier in the week I was was waxing lyrical (all right, ranting) about the onslaught of negative press and gloomy defeatism being lobbed at the TQ and Titanic Belfast – and lo and behold, the tide is turning!  Last night, a double-page spread in the Belfast Telegraph, complete with front-page headline, at last beating the drum of optimism and hope.

Best fact of the article: tickets were selling at the rate of one every 80 seconds on the first day (with 33,000 now sold already).  Best quote of the article: someone booking from Maine, USA wrote “The best gift ever!  Hoping to go to Belfast when we go to Killarney in March!!  Cannot believe that I will get to see where she was made!!!”

That one joyfully-exclamation-mark-filled quote gives me hope that it will work.  Susan and I were in Killarney last summer – it’s bunged, absolutely bursting with tourists, in a way we’ve never really experienced here in Belfast.  Obviously there’s never been anything which fired the imagination of people visiting places like Killarney to make the journey North – but now there is.  Killarney to Belfast probably seems like a quick hop next door to someone from Maine.  Get ready, Belfast, this is really happening…

Second bit of newspaper-related news: you might remember the wonderful Eleanor, who told me the story of her father and his role in creating Titanic’s fireplaces and woodwork.  Well, on my recent return to Larne to thank Eleanor for her story and show her the video, we were snapped for international stardom in the Larne Times.  (I was a minister in Larne for 3 years – it was my very first post – and we used to have a competition between all the ministers in the town to see who could appear in the Larne Times most often.  I have to tell you that I won, by an embarrassing margin.  And even now, they can’t get enough of me…!)

And I love their optimism about the international reach of The Dock website:

Finally, huge thanks to all those who made for a lovely, Christmassy, welcoming, chatty, festive, funny, good-news-filled Christmas Bash last night at the Arc Apartments.. I had a blast!