Just a quick update this morning before I head off for another great day at Dock Cafe…. yeah!!  I cannot tell you how much I’m enjoying this… the buzz and laughter and conversation, new faces, regular customers (yep we’ve got a few of those already!), great tea, coffee, bakes, art, photography, comfy corners and wide-open spaces for a new community to form.  “Where once we built ships, today we build community” – indeedy.

So anyway, the quick update!  A few pics of Dock Cafe life yesterday… Tegan being trained in the art of making the perfect cup of Suki tea… our “eat your piece in peace” lunchtime policy… chillin out at The Dock…

And two bits of walk-related news:  One, from now on the Dock Walks will leave from Dock Cafe at 3:33 every Sunday, rather than the Odyssey… kinda makes sense doesn’t it!

And two: tomorrow is St Patrick’s Day, so as always The Dock will be part of the St Patrick’s Day pilgrimage from Saul to Downpatrick – more details here.  A Dock Walk with a difference, at the spot where it all began… hopefully see you there!

The very first Dock Movie I ever made, when still getting to grips with iMovie, was based on a prayer of St Patrick – I blush at the editing “prowess” now, but the prayer is unimprovable! –

14th March… that means it’s exactly one month till 14th April (yes, really), the Big Date of Big Dates at the centre of all Titanic-related activity: 14th is Iceberg Day.

Which means that the Titanic Quarter has gone from being busy, to being frantic, to entering a whole new previously-undiscovered realm of activity.  Everything is now on a countdown of weeks or even days: the Yardmen walk, the opening of Titanic Belfast, the lightshow, the MTV concert, the commemorative events…  Even little details are all coming together.  I was stuck in traffic today beside the guys putting up the sign (pic on right) to Titanic Belfast on the M3 sliproad – one more little piece in the puzzle of making the Titanic Quarter ready for its glory days…

So can i ask something of you tonight, people of The Dock… could you take the time, at this one-month-to-go distance, to click on this link and luxuriate in the fabulous creativity, variety and richness of events planned for the next few weeks.  Mark the dates in your diary; book the babysitter; reserve the tickets; save your place.  We will never, EVER have seen a month like this in the history of our little province… let’s enjoy every minute of it!

So did you catch it?  If not, the full programme of tonight’s Titanic Songs of Praise is on iPlayer here

…or if that’s too much singin’, you can just catch Eleanor’s bit here

…or the Dock’s bit here – look out for Dock Cafe!

It doesn’t seem long since we were racing to get Dock Cafe ready for Eamonn and the Songs of Praise film crew – obviously things move fast in BBC-land, as the programme is now ready to broadcast – set your Sky+ for tomorrow afternoon – 5:10pm, Sunday 11th March on BBC1.

In the TQ we’ll all be watching it together at the end of tomorrow’s Dock Walk.  It’s so exciting!  How and where will the Dock appear? After all that work, will there be more than a fleeting glimpse of Dock Cafe?  Will we get to see Jonny and Olwyn’s sellotape holding up postcards on the wall, or Joe and Elaine’s candle on the table?  Will anyone notice that my beard was much more fulsome on the first day of filming than the second?  Will Eamonn say “the Titanic sank, so it did”?

One thing we do know for sure is that the incomparable Eleanor will appear, as you can see by clicking here to see a preview of her contribution to the programme.  What a complete star!

And to complete my media blitzkrieg on all your senses this weekend, as well as watching my stubbly mug on BBC1, you’ll be able to listen to my dulcet tones on Sunday Sequence on BBC Radio Ulster – I’m due to pop in to chat to William Crawley about Eamonn, Songs of Praise, Titanic and all things Dock at approx 9:45am during tomorrow’s programme.  Set your…(whatever it is you set for a radio)

And on top of that, we’ve been joined in Dock Cafe this weekend by Anja, a journalist from a fabulous glossy German magazine called Mare.  We first met when I was tour-guiding last summer; she was part of a junket of journalists who were writing travel articles on the Belfast tourism scene, but after hearing about the Dock while on the Titanic Walking Tour, she concentrated more on the Dock story in her article and has now been commissioned to come back over for the weekend to do a follow-up article!  (…it’s probably for the best that her article didn’t concentrate on my tour – I think it was one of my very first, so there may have been lots of enthusiasm but not a lot of facts…!)

So – TV, radio, print – and not just in German, apparently I was in the Belfast Tele’s ‘Question of Faith’ last weekend (I didn’t see it – if anyone did and hasn’t thrown it out yet, could you save it for me!)

And invading social media as well – the Dock Cafe opening on Thursday got some great coverage on Twitter, as you can see below.

And what of Dock Cafe in the midst of all this excitement, you may well ask?  Well, you’ve seen the pics of the opening, and now we’ve got two “normal” days of business under our belts.  I’ll write about it all in more detail next week, but for now just to say:

Wow.

To get a little taster of Dock Cafe life in action, have a look at this cool timelapse from Alaninbelfast: