A little bit of continental glamour to your update today… How’s your French?!

The Dock features this week on a French blog detailing a first-ever visit to Belfast, in which the writer, as well as being overwhelmed by the warm Belfast welcome, having their preconceptions blown away and enjoying an absorbing day at our wonderful neighbours SS Nomadic, Titanic Belfast and Titanic’s Dock & Pump House, called in for un petit coffee at un cafe tres marvelleux:

En repartant vers les docks, je tombe par hasard sur The Dock Café. Joli projet de partage qui propose de déguster une boisson chaude et une pâtisserie en échange d’une donation libre, dans un décor très artistique. C’est un de mes coups de cœur.

Or in a less sexy language:

Returning by the docks, I fell by chance into The Dock Café, where you can have a hot drink and snack in exchange an “honesty” offering of cash, the café is set in a lovely setting with very artistic décor. I really enjoyed my time in this hidden gem.

Man alive, I love French.  How much more fun and dramatic does it sound to ‘tombe par hasard’ than ‘happen upon’ (which I suppose would be the literal translation)?

And speaking of those crazy continentals, the Dock Cafe team is becoming very international these days… One day last week, your coffee was being served by Alexandra (Spanish) and Clemence (French) as well as Jordan and Debs (err… Lisburnian and Belfastian):

We also said ‘au revoir’  (in our best terrible French accents) to Marjorie as she returns to France, and ‘Sveiki’ (in our best terrible Lithuanian accents) to Inga as she joins the team:

And at the risk of mentioning the war, of course we have to give props to Joachim for conducting a lonely, one-man campaign to make anyone in Dock Cafe give two hoots about the World Cup…

Meanwhile, out at the front door, Di Rossi ice-cream is back every Saturday over the summer – giving you the chance to turn your (Peruvian or Columbian) coffee Italian by adding a scoop of gorgeous home-made ice-cream so it becomes an Affagato (which comes highly recommended and, as you can see, carries no possibility for embarrassment whatsoever.

C’est la vie!

It’s one of those days when the positive, hopeful voices in Northern Ireland seem to be winning out…

Her Maj is in town (if you remember, she gave The Dock the royal seal of approval during her last visit) and tomorrow she visits the Titanic film studios – just as the global impact of Game Of Thrones seems to be hitting critical mass.  The most talked-about TV show on the planet is joining the most talked-about boat on the planet to provide a platform for Northern Ireland to show its positive side to the world.

Yesterday was the last (for now…!) of my Sunday morning Thoughts For The Day – and that sense that it’s time to tell our Good News Stories was the theme.  You can listen here (starting at 55:00)  or read here:

My most embarrassing moment as Chaplain to the Titanic Quarter was broadcast to a global audience of millions. The BBC had arranged to go live from the Titanic slipways at the exact 100-year anniversary of the moment that the ship was launched. At exactly 12:13pm on 31st May 1911, Titanic slid down the slope in 62 seconds flat, accompanied by the clamour of cheers and joyful shouts of her builders. So at exactly 12:13pm on 31st May 2011, it was my job to lead the assembled crowd in a 62 second cheer to mark the moment.

Two things I discovered: 62 seconds is a short time to launch a ship, but it’s a long time to lead a cheer.  And secondly, there is clearly a default mechanism in anyone who works on TV that says that if the story is about Titanic, it must be a very sombre and sorrowful occasion to mark the tragedy of April 1912. So the newsreaders on BBC News 24 who introduced my 62 seconds of screaming my lungs out arranged their faces into ‘serious news mode’ and introduced me as the man who was going to lead a service of remembrance for the lost on Titanic.

To make matters worse, during the 62 seconds, while the crowd on the slipways joined me in shouting and cheering and hollering, the banner headline across the bottom of the screen read ‘Titanic sank on her maiden voyage.  More than 1,500 people died when the ship sank.  Ceremony being held to remember those who died’.  Anyone watching News 24 with the sound turned down must have thought that Belfast people have a very, very strange way of showing grief.

(You can watch the whole shameful episode here)

In a funny sort of way, despite the misunderstanding, I think something significant happened that day. For 100 years, in Belfast we didn’t talk about Titanic. It was our shame and regret, not to be mentioned or spoken of. I’ve met plenty of people who had parents or grandparents who worked in the shipyard 100 years ago, and they all tell the same story: If they tried to ask Grandad ‘What was it like building Titanic?’, Granny would rush over, “No, no! You can’t ask that. He doesn’t want to talk about it’.

I can understand that, but I think that over these past few years, there’s something beautiful and something spiritual about the way this buried story is being redeemed. That 62 second shout was part of a city finding its voice and finding its story again – and it’s a story older and stronger than the images that have defined us in recent decades.

This is who we were and who we are: we built a wonder of the world in the Belfast docks 100 years ago. Nowhere else could have built Titanic; she was the largest man-made moving object in the world and no other shipyard had the dock facilities, the workforce or the ambition to match us.  A little industrial city, cut off from natural resources, punching above its weight, leading the world.  And today, when we’re at our best, we’re standing on the shoulders of those giants – a world class city, with a welcome, a creativity, a strength that is unique.  Time to lift up our heads.