It’s Saturday, it’s 1pm, and I’m at the Titanic Dock and Pump House.  If all had gone according to plan, I would at this very moment have been poised on the brink – ready to take my Titanic Leap!  But thanks to the efforts of some thieving hoods (and I am quite grateful to them really…), who stole the vital (well I thought it was pretty vital) Powerfan gadget which was going to break my fall, I’m enjoying a ham and brie panini and a nice cuppa in the cafe instead.

But fear not!  The Titanic Quarter is in the headlines today in spite of the lack of any death-defying leaps – on the front page of the Belfast Telegraph no less.  As Telegraph readers (and listeners to yesterday’s Steve Nolan show) now know, there’s a huge controversy over the plans to introduce car park charges at the Thompson Dock.

Now I’m going to try to not get involved with that debate…! – but what does bug me (and it does really bug me – this place is getting under my skin!) is the headline on the front of the Belfast Telegraph – ‘Pay £50 to see this hole in the ground’.  For one thing that’s a pretty outrageous headline – of course it doesn’t cost £50 (that’s just the charge for unbooked tour buses) – in fact it’s a pretty cheap place to park (or free if you get a cuppa in the Pump House).  And for another thing, the Dry Dock is so much more than a hole in the ground; as the last spot the Titanic rested on dry ground, it’s full of history and atmosphere and wonder.  If it’s just a hole in the ground, the Giant’s Causeway is just a pile of ould stones, Westminster Abbey is just a big church and the Eiffel Tower is a load of iron girders.

What is wrong with us in Northern Ireland?  Why can’t we appreciate, celebrate and support good things when they happen here?  I guess my problem with the Telegraph headline is that people might read the one-liner (and ignore the rest of the article, which gives the more balanced story), and decide not to bother ever making the trip down into the Titanic Quarter to see all the brilliant stuff that’s down here.  Which would just be a crime – because there’s so much to see, and because some great people are working really hard to make it interesting, welcoming and worth visiting.  They could do without the Telegraph torpedoing their hard work.

There’s maybe something underlying my reaction – and it keeps cropping up down here in the TQ.  I guess it all comes down to hope.  I think I love this place so much because it’s full of hopeful people who believe that great things can happen here, and who act on that belief.  It’s such a contrast to the attitude that I think we’ve embraced for too long in N.I. – a defeated, ‘expect the worst and it’ll probably happen’ mentality – the ‘it’s just a hole in the ground’ syndrome.  Maybe it comes from where we’ve been – but it shouldn’t characterise where we’re going.

To add final insult to injury, the Telegraph used some 10-year-old photos to illustrate the Dry Dock – as if the last few years of regeneration and hard work hadn’t happened.  So make a date to see what it actually looks like soon!