The sun rises over the Titanic Quarter.  It’s going to be a scorching Saturday, a beautiful day in a beautiful city.

The Titanic Quarter starts to spring to life; movement at Nomadic, Titanic Belfast, slipways and docks – locals strolling, visitors exploring.

The kettle is on at The Dock; the doors open, the first customers arrive.

Today’s pop-up market stall is set up: beautiful Origami flowers at stupendously good prices.

Titanic sails past outside.  It is about 8 feet long; has the long century in the water shrunk it…?

Lunchtime; the soup sells out in no time (who in the world feels like hot homemade soup on a hot day like this?  Loads of people apparently.)  Afternoon; the day keeps getting hotter.  The Dock DIY gang bash, drill and saw away in the new extension (more on that soon…!)  Chats in the Prayer Garden.  Titanic Pilgrimage Walk in the sunshine (was it only 2 weeks ago that we were drenched to the skin?).  As the sun streams into the cafe, the Knitting group knit in the sunny corner and the Book Group chat at the next table.

Late afternoon, a long-awaited treat: a visit to the just-opened Game Of Thrones exhibition at Titanic Belfast.  The craftsmanship of the props and costumes is stupendous; it makes me incredibly proud that this top-quality production is based in Belfast.

Evening; the Faith Foundations group start to arrive.  (And then keep arriving… and arriving… and arriving…)  The queue for the barbecue stretches around the corner; Mace are doing a roaring trade in lollipops (you’re never too trendy for a lollipop)

Hordes of sunburnt trendy people stream into the cafe, full of sunshine and hamburger and ice-cream.  They squash into their seats, sing, chat, pray, laugh, and settle down to discuss the discipline of prayer together.

The sun sets over the Titanic Quarter.  It’s been a beautiful day in a beautiful city.

And another mention for The Dock this week – on this blog – written by a chap who is running around the coast of Northern Ireland!

Glad we were able to offer him a cuppa and a chance to put his feet up for a while…

The Dock has been popping up in all sorts of unexpected places this week…

As well as our appearance on the UTV news website (which, I’ve just been informed, was the number-one story on Monday), we also appeared in the Irish News and the Belfast Tele:

That pales into insignificance compared to the majesty of our guest slots on TV screens across the nation on Monday night…  Have you been watching The Fall, the addictive Belfast-based thriller series starring Gillian Anderson?  Have you occasionally been momentarily distracted from the plot by being able to play ‘Spot The Belfast Landmark’?  Can you therefore imagine my joy when a whole scene took place with Dock Cafe standing proudly in the background?

At the risk of giving away the whole story, the plot goes like this.  Car rolls up – with Dock Cafe in the background!  Blonde Scully and Man With Beard get out and chat – with Dock Cafe in the background! Man With Beard talks to Other Man With Beard – with Dock Cafe in the background!  Then there’s lots of stuff about a killer on the loose.

(Don’t read the next paragraph if you haven’t caught up with Series 3 of Game Of thrones yet!)

The other big TV event this week has been the shocking penultimate episode of Series 3 of Game Of Thrones – which managed to polish off a significant proportion of the lead characters in true Game Of Thrones style – shocking, violent, breathtakingly good TV.

What you may not realise is that there’s a Dock link to that game-changing, controversial scene at the end of the episode: Walder Frey’s wife, held hostage by Caitlyn Stark before everything goes a bit blood-splattered for everyone concerned, is played by Kelly – who played the slightly more upbeat role of ‘Girl In Cafe’ in the Robb Murphy music video filmed here a few weeks back:

Congrats to Kelly who kept the monumental plot twists secret from all of us Throne-addicts who were digging for secrets during the shoot!

It may seem a bit weird to be celebrating two very tangential appearances by The Dock on TV, given that we’ve had our very own prime-time UTV Dockumentry – but there’s an extra buzz in the familiar unexpectedly popping up on your TV screen – twice in one night!  And isn’t it worth celebrating that some of the absolute best TV out there anywhere in the world at the minute is being filmed in Belfast?

It makes me very proud to think that the most riveting BBC drama in years, and the most spectacular TV fantasy series of all time, are both filmed within a stone’s throw of Dock Cafe.

A fantastic from UTV about Dock Cafe:

Today is a huge day in Titanic-world.  On 31st May 1911 at 12:13 (two minutes earlier than planned) the triggers were released on the largest man-made moving object in the world – and RMS Titanic slid and scraped down the slipway in a speedy 62 seconds.

So it’s exactly 102 years to the day – which means it’s exactly two years since the Dock Chaplains led this 62-second cheer, and exactly one year since I made this 62(ish)-second sprint.

On the same day, Titanic’s almost-identical sister RMS Olympic left her Belfast birthplace – and, almost unnoticed amidst such mighty events, the little tender ship SS Nomadic also left Belfast to start serving the huge ocean liners at the port of Cherbourg.  Anyone watching the Nomadic chug down Belfast Lough would scarcely have believed that she would outlive the gargantuan ships she had been built to serve.

(My Titanorak friend Ashlin tells me that Nomadic’s first act of service was to transport the visiting White Star Line dignitaries who had watched Titanic’s launch – including Bruce Ismay and J.P. Morgan – out to the waiting Olympic – which then left them back to Liverpool where she was opened up to an awestruck public for a week before steaming down to Southampton to start her life of service.  So this is a day of many anniversaries!)

This year, of course, Nomadic’s anniversary is being celebrated by the long-awaited moment that her doors are opened to the world again.  Today we stood on the decks that once echoed to Molly Brown’s high heels, ate lunch while sitting on the benches once occupied by J. J. Astor’s posterior, climbed the stairways in the footsteps of Benjamin Guggenheim, and declared SS Nomadic open for business once more!

(And I did enjoy noticing that, prominently displayed just behind all the dignitaries who gave speeches at the opening were the signs and logo of a certain lovely wee cafe next door.  Any excuse for publicity…)

A few days ago, some lucky members of The Dock were part of a sneak preview visit of the ship – here are a few of their reactions:

So hopefully you’ll be booking your tickets now…?!

And if you’d like to find out more you can catch up on the story of Nomadic here.

And finally… as if that wasn’t enough maritime marvellousness for one week, the Dock team had the great privilege yesterday of meeting groups of Japanese tourists visiting Belfast on board the Peace Boat.

The Dock volunteers did a fantastic job – showing off their love of our great wee city with groups of students – who got the (erroneous?) impression that the sun always shines in Belfast…

Showing our visitors the sights of the city, enjoying fish & chips, overcoming the language barrier with the universal language of Titanic (as you can see from the first pic below), and finishing up the day at the Grand Staircase in Titanic Belfast enjoying a display of Norn Irish and Japanese culture… it was a day to remember!