Worldwide press coverage, the biggest-ever Dock Walk, meeting the neighbours, celebrating the past… it’s been a flipping amazing week!

Things kicked off in style with the Angus Buchan event at the Odyssey last weekend.  It was great to meet loads of people from all over the country who had travelled to hear Angus’s story – and to see the massive wave of response when he called for people to stand up and make a commitment to building peace in Northern Ireland.  Loads of brilliant people called into the Dock prayer room – some for prayer, some for a chat, some to admire the view of the TQ through the window!  A great weekend.

Then for me & Sus it was a trip off down memory lane… we returned to Mossley Parish, our home church, for its 40th-anniversary service.  Amongst many notable achievements during its 40 years, Mossley is responsible for introducing a tongue-tied 17-year-old Chris Bennett to the exotic blonde Susan Maguire who had just arrived at the Youth Group barbeque… history in the making!  Gillian and Alan, who organised the barbeque and are therefore to blame for all that followed, are with us in the pic.

Then… biggest Dock Walk EVER!  Thanks to a visitation from all my old chums from Carrowdore and Millisle (who are still surviving as a church despite having me in charge of them for a year), over 50 of us walked, talked, prayed and worshipped in the sun last Sunday afternoon.

We even got to see (for the first time on a Dock Walk) around the beautiful old Drawing Rooms – they were open as a special occasion in preparation for the Big Launch Event on Tuesday.  Speaking of which…

You’ve already had me making a takeover-bid on your TV screens and airwaves – so if you haven’t already seen the footage of that monumental, emotional 62-second cheer, click here.  For now, here are a few new angles on the event; the people in the picture to your left are the Mayors of Belfast, Southampton, Cherbourg and Cobh – all the places which Titanic touched in its brief timespan.  The chap in the photos below  is Hugh Robinson (with his minister, Roger, one of my friends from the Arrow course) who discovered in his attic a faded old postcard of Titanic under construction.  On closer examination, the postcard had been written and posted within a few hours of Titanic’s Launch, telling the story of that great day from one of its original eyewitnesses.  Quite a piece of history! – and so Hugh, Roger and the postcard were a bit of a cause celebre out on the boats which gathered on the Lough to sound their horns at 12:13 on Tuesday.

As if to further cement my ‘Titanic nerd’ credentials during the past week or two, as well as my over-enthusiastic cheering and my hard-hat tour of Nomadic, I went to a lecture in the City Hall (a lecture!  voluntarily!) about one small detail of the Titanic story – the ‘mystery ship’ which some of the survivors claimed to have seen in the distance, failing to respond to Titanic’s distress calls.  It’s just such a fascinating story – I really enjoyed the lecture!  (never thought I’d write that…)

And so to this weekend – and another fantastic time meeting the neighbours – the sun shining on our deckchair cafe as the new community in the TQ started to chat, bond, meet, connect… such a privilege to be part of it all!

So apparently it’s gone worldwide… a phone call this morning from someone watching the launch celebrations in Singapore, reports coming in that my voice has been heard on Radio 2, a (kinda intense!) interview on Radio 4… the Launch Day has hit the news in a big way!

I’m currently probably too tired and a wee bit emotional (that ship has finally got under my skin, it seems!) to pass sensible comment on it all just now – so for the time being, just for those of you who aren’t sick of the sight of my face popping up on your screens today, here’s some of the coverage (as you can tell, my tech skills have failed me -it’s just filmed off the TV, old school!)

An interview with Mark Simpson was a great way to start the day:

Then the BBC gave a fantastic amount of live coverage to the 62-second cheer at 12:13pm and Karen’s prayer:

And an interview with Julie McCullough was a great way to close the day:

And it’s not all about the Beeb – UTV got a look-in too; this is their main article:

And this is their coverage of the reading of the eyewitness account of Titanic’s launch back in May 1911:

And finally! if you want to hear me squirm a bit, check out that interview on Radio 4 – it’s at 33:36 into the PM show – link here.

Very emotional (and a little bit hoarse) coming from the Titanic Launch 100-year celebrations.  The people of Belfast did the old girl proud – a fantastic crowd out on the sun-drenched slipways, hollering and cheering for all they were worth as boats in the Lough sounded their horns for 62 seconds at exactly 12:13pm.

What a great, great day for Dock-world.  It felt like we were part of a movement – a city rediscovering its hope, its pride and its entrepreneurial spirit as we joined together to mark the launching of a Wonder of the World.  Of course the spectre of Titanic’s fate always looms large – and I hope we were respectful to it in our prayers and moments of quiet – but there was such a sense of joy that we could share this rich, wonderful, sad, world-shaking story – and that Belfast gets to be at the very heart of the tale.

We also got to slip in a mention (never pass up an opportunity, eh!) that the different locations of today’s events across the slipways and on several boats out on the Lough all featured the same prayer, led at the same time, by an Anglican, a Methodist, A Presbyterian and a Catholic.  Shared Medley in action!

And then came the media stampede!  I’ve now been interviewed by BBC1, Downtown, Cool FM, BBC Newsline, TV3, Sky, UTV, some French TV channel… in the end I lost count!  So I’m giving up on trying to track down all my TV appearances out there on the airwaves today – safe to say I’m probably terrorising a TV set near you even as you read this!

I’ll hopefully be able to upload some better-quality versions of at least some of this footage over the next while – but in the meantime, for any of you who missed out, here is a very rough recording of the BBC newsline article (which is the same as the BBC Breakfast presentation but with an added interview between me and Mark Simpson:  click this link here.

(More to add later – I’m off now to be interviewed for Radio 4.  Y’know, as you do…)

…the Beeb are making a well-deserved big fuss about the Titanic’s launch anniversary tomorrow – you can follow their coverage by:

– checking out Mark Simpson’s online article here

– tuning into to BBC Breakfast on BBC1 tomorrow morning at (provisionally) 6:20, 7:20 and 8:20, when the plan is to go live to Belfast to see Mark introduce the footage filmed out on the slipways over the weekend

– or keeping an eye on the BBC from 12 noon onwards – there’s the possibility that the ’62-second cheer’ (which will mark the exact anniversary of Titanic’s minute-long slide down the slipways into the sea) will go out live on TV.

So exciting!