So many great photo-ops around the TQ these days – beauty shots, pics of changes and new developments, images loaded with hope for the future, and others carrying echoes from the past…

Like this one, spotted on the wall in the vestry of St Patrick’s church on the Newtownards Road, where I was preachin’ a few weeks ago.  It’s taken from the top of the churchtower of St Patrick’s in the 1970’s, looking over a very different (and very busy) working shipyard… amazing to think of all the changes we would see if we had a time-lapse of photos from the top of that tower!

And speaking of history, another little gem of Titanic heritage for fellow-nerds… for a brief but gratefully-appreciated few days this week, we were able to bring the Walking Tours into Thomas Andrews’ office in old Harland and Wolff headquarters building.  Thomas Andrews (as you may remember from the  movie) was the chief designer of Titanic, and his office still contains his beautiful, well-used old desk.  Amazing to be able to stand right beside the desk that once contained the diagrams and schematics for Titanic…

And while we’re on the Walking Tours, more famous visitors last weekend: the ladies in this picture are the daughters of William McQuitty, the producer of the old black-and-white Titanic movie, A Night To Remember. The movie re-ignited interest in the story of Titanic when it was released in 1958, and lots of people reckon it’s a much better film than Kate’n’Leo’s effort… the film print has been digitally-restored (ready for release at anniversary-time next year no doubt) – it’s going on my Amazon Wish List!

(You can see a glimpse of the movie here.)

And while we’re (kinda) on the subject of boats, I got to set foot on a boat in the Abercorn Basin (the hopeful eventual location the Dock boat) for the first time this week – joining some of the Titanic Quarter Ltd gang on the Chili Padi, which serves as handy overnight accommodation for James, one of the TQ Ltd top bods.  It was great to chat about some of the plans for the coming years in the development, and yet again be swept away by the hope, dynamism and vision that the TQ team are putting into the regeneration of Belfast.  It’s impossible to breathe the same air as these guys and be down-in-the-mouth or negative about the future, so – just to reiterate my thoughts from a few days ago – let’s join their optimistic revolution and keep talking it up!

And speaking of the future, while I was at a meeting in the City Hall this week, I popped into a jobs fair that was advertising the available job opportunities in Titanic Belfast next year – great to see it bunged with people keen to join the TQ momentum!  And while I mention Titanic Belfast – as you can see, it now looks 99% finished on the outside – and the fit-out of the interior continues apace.  Only a few months to go before my first tour…

And finally, we started off with a shot of the cranes in the 1970s – so let’s finish with a few shots taken last week.  A sudden shaft of sunshine on the Dock Walk last week (rather fabulously, bursting through the clouds just as we were listening to our worship song) made these rather cool reflections in the puddles at the base of the cranes – nature and industry combined for an unexpected moment of beauty:

Another auspicious event in Dock-World this week: the first time that all the Dock Directors have been in the same room at the same time. (At all previous meetings there was always someone who couldn’t make it – although I’m honour-bound to say that they always had a good excuse…)

So here for the very first time is the full Usual Suspects-style line-up of the masterminds behind The Dock:

(L-R Michele, Philip, Sarah (ultra-efficient company secretary), David, Hugh, Margaret (honourable chairperson), Michael, Me)

And can I just say, what an utterly, utterly brilliant team to have at the centre of Dock-World – I couldn’t be more excited about all that lies in store for us…

During the week I was at a junket in the Stormont Hotel (yep, the dreary misery of my life continues), along with some of the gang from The Dock, to find out more about the plans for the big Titanic anniversary next year.  Oh my word – the plans are HUGE – MTV concerts on the slipways, lightshows at the new Visitor Centre, a proms concert, commemorations, new plays, re-enactments, festivals… click here to find out more (and especially check out the links to Titanic Belfast Festival and Land Of Giants).

It was great being in a roomful of people who just exuded excitement, hope and confidence for the big year that lies ahead.  The message kept coming through again and again – this is our year.  A once-in-a-lifetime opportunity – a cliché maybe, but now, at this point in our history, it could be genuinely true.  To grasp that opportunity, we need to stop grumbling, worrying, or waiting for someone else to do something, and just go for it.

It’s time to start a movement – a word-of-mouth revolution, changing the way we talk about Belfast.  It sometimes boggles my mind that I still encounter so many people who are default-negative, “it’ll never happen” naysayers about the potential for the TQ and the city.  We need a tribe of people who think that Belfast CAN change, that it can be huge and vibrant and shine brightly at the centre of the Titanic anniversary next year.

Negative people sometimes sound very smart because, hey, it’s a dark world out there and so they often turn out to be right.  But sometimes a default-negative attitude is cynicism disguised as wisdom.  And it frequently becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So we need to change the conversation.  On the Dock Walk today, standing under Samson and Goliath in beautiful Autumn sunshine, looking back towards Titanic Belfast shimmering in the sunlight, we spoke and prayed hope, life, success, momentum, energy, good over our city with all its potential.  We’re not the only ones – all sorts of people are working, dreaming and preparing for an amazing year for Belfast in 2012.  I think it’s a God-thing, and a good thing.

Are you in?

Check out this vid for a sense of the excitement and vision from the team at NITB:

 

I did something terrible this morning.  I left the house without my trusty iPhone, and didn’t realise my grave error until I was driving down the motorway, running much too late to turn back.  Sad to admit, I gave an actual gasp of horror.  How would I survive?!

It really made me think… have we become a bit too dependant on our little miracle devices?  I felt distinctly uneasy all day long without instant access to my diary, my contacts – without even the means to text someone to tell them I was running late (which I inevitably was, since – like most of us – I usually rely on the phone to tell me the time…)  What if someone was trying to contact me and couldn’t?  WOULD THE WORLD STILL TURN???

Well now that I’m back home and we’re reunited, it seems that somehow, civilisation did survive.  A few people had to wait a few hours for my response to their text or message.  They didn’t burst into tears, hate me or abandon all hope.  It all seems to have worked out OK…

Appropriately enough, listening to the radio on my way home in the car (because, y’know, I couldn’t listen to music on the iPhone) I heard people discussing the recent hardware blip that has left BlackBerry users out of contact for days.  While acknowledging how frustrating it was for those affected, one man told the story of how he lived without a phone for 3 months – and how peaceful life became as a result.  Without the ability to continually check for messages or seek stimulus, he spent more time daydreaming, looking, thinking, just being.  He recommended that all of us try to plan ‘unplugged’ time into our diaries on a regular basis.  A kind of technological Sabbath.

Good advice, I reckon.  So I’m writing this blog to post on the website and Facebook and I’ll write a memo on the iPhone.

We’re sticking with the local boy for the next Dock Book Group…

Among Belfast’s many unsung, under-appreciated claims to fame (alongside the fact that we invented air-conditioning and that we built this boat that seems to have become quite famous), is our connection to Narnia-creator, pipe-smoker, reluctant Christian and masterful theologian C.S.Lewis.  (Dock fact: Susan sourced the pictures for the guys who painted the C.S.Lewis mural.  Claim to fame or what!)

We’ve been rediscovering the joys of Lewis over the last few Dock Book Groups – starting with his theology (Mere Christianity), working back to the story of his early life and conversion (Surprised By Joy) and now jumping forward to his later life, where his immense intellect and brilliantly incisive defence of faith were sorely tried when he lost his wife to cancer.

Confession time: I had presumed from the title of Surprised By Joy that the story of his marriage and bereavement were in that book.  (His wife was called Joy y’see… yes I did feel stupid.)  As it turns out ‘joy’ was an intellectual and spiritual concept which Lewis used to describe the experience of his growing awakening in faith.  (Dock Book Group loved the fact that despite all this talk of joy, he clearly remained a grumpy, miserable swine throughout his spiritual rebirth…)  So it was rather neat that later in life he did fall in love with someone called Joy (who no doubt surprised him, as often as possible, just to compound the irony).  And how much more bitter that this late-blossoming love affair, which turned his stuffy academic existence upside down, should be snatched away from him.

So, we’re going to plunge in and read the book which definitely is the story of his struggle with doubt, anger and grief – it’s called A Grief Observed.  By all accounts, it’s short (100 or so pages) but it’s brutal – no stone unturned in the honest account of an anguished soul.  But as the story of an incredible man (yep, he’s become a bit of a Dock hero) facing life’s biggest question (Why, God?), we thought we had to read it.

We’ll be gathering to chat about the book, Lewis and life in general at the Premier Inn, 9:30am on Saturday 22nd October.  Anyone who has an opinion on any of those topics is more than welcome!