Of all the things I’m most proud of in this life, possibly the highlight is the tagline I came up with for the Titanic Quarterly – the magazine that The Dock publishes for residents of the ARC apartments. Ready for it?….

‘For everyone enjoying ARC life’

I know, I know – amazing.  (And now you’ve got that Blur song in your head for the rest of the day).

For anyone looking at ARC life from a distance, I thought you’d still like to see the issues of Titanic Quarterly we’ve already produced over this past year – so they are now available as PDFs under the ‘Media’ tab of the website, or you can click to have a look at them below.

Enjoy!

Another little bit of fame for The Dock: we’re now featured as a ‘place to eat’ on the GoToBelfast website – link here.

It’s a bit surreal to see our home-made little pop-up coffee shop listed alongside luminaries of the Belfast dining scene such as the Potted Hen, Mourne Seafood Bar and Molly’s Yard – but hey, why not?!  Dock Cafe is unique and I think that Tegan, Timmy and the team have loads of reasons to be very proud of it!

So the next time you’re wondering where to go for a cuppa, here’s the GoToBelfast entry in full:

The Dock is unique: a pop-up space for community, conversation and Life in the Titanic Quarter.  Furnished (in true pop-up style) in a fusion of old and new (we call it Victorian-Edwardian-Industrial-Pop-Up-Chic) it’s a space to relax, unwind, meet up and chill out.  You can enjoy hot strong coffee, a huge variety of teas and delicious bakes – or BYOF (Bring Your Own Food) and use our plates, knives and forks.

You can find a table, a squashy sofa or a cosy corner to watch the world go by.  You can browse a huge range of art and photography – from archive pictures of Titanic under construction, to cutting-edge art, to photography of Belfast’s shipyard at every stage of its history.  Explore some unique artefacts from Belfast’s shipbuilding heyday – models, relics and furniture from the evocative Harland & Wolff Drawing Office building.  (There’s even a door from Thomas Andrews’ family home.)   Dabble with a huge range of board games and jigsaws (if you have a few hours to spare…)

Find out all about what’s on offer in the Titanic Quarter at the information stand (or by chatting to the  enthusiastic volunteers).  You can pick-up a bargain at the pop-up market stall, which is available for all sorts of different local cottage industries and home businesses. Take time to pause and reflect in the Prayer Garden – a little corner of greenery, light and quiet in the corner of the cafe.  You can strum on the Titanic Guitars (as long as you are at least a 3-chord wonder) and even meet Kate and Leo (they’re the goldfish).    Everything – the art, the food, the coffee, the photography, the sculpture – is local and home-made; the whole enterprise is volunteer-run, and the ethos is hand-built with love.  We’re here to celebrate the good news in Belfast and enjoy Life in the Titanic Quarter.

Today we re-started one of my absolute favourite experiments in the life of Dock-World: the Titanic Slipway Pilgrimage.

It’s a walk around the outline of Titanic on the slipways with pauses for reflection at various significant points – the lifeboats, the names of the lost, the water’s edge etc.  Music and different readings from ‘A Night To Remember’ and Filson Young (a journalist who witnessed Titanic’s launch) bring the story alive and also give food for thought.  I suppose the whole thing is a mash-up between my experience of being a Titanic Walking Tour guide, a Chaplain and a Dock Walker!

Today we had a great group of people – Canadians, Australians, locals (and even some English people – but they were nice).  The plan is to run the pilgrimage walks every Friday and Saturday (weather permitting) at 2pm (note the new time).  The walk is especially intended as a grace gift for anyone who’s just emerging from the Titanic Belfast visitor experience – but anyone is welcome, so if you’d like to call by TB at 2pm some day over the Summer. it’ll be great to see you!

On the way back from the walk, in the middle of that ferocious hail-storm this afternoon, I bumped into Wesley – whose cool panoramic photos already feature in Dock Cafe and are about to feature a lot more.  He captured this beauty of a photo – as you can see, the pilgrimage walk finished just in time before the storm came!

Life never stands still for long in The Dock.  We’ve just welcomed our new next-door-neighbours on one side – the TQ Mace – and now we’re getting ready for the grand opening (at the beginning of June) of our next-door-neighbour on the other side: the lovingly-refurbished SS Nomadic.

Long-term Dockers will know that we’ve been following the fortunes of this fabulous old boat with great interest.  Nomadic is our last best physical link back to the Titanic – built by the same men, at the same time, with the same metal and rivets (and even the same door frames and light fittings), Nomadic was the tender (taxi) boat that carried out some of the great and the good to the Titanic when she docked at Cherbourg.  (Although in fact her story doesn’t begin or end there – the little ship has had a tumultuous, fascinating century before ending up right back where she started).

As the Dock has progressed from vision, to walk, to team, to pop-up cafe – Nomadic has progressed from rusty wreck, to scaffolding-encrusted project, to shining beautiful ship (albeit with a few tarpaulins still in place for the finishing touches!)

And I’ve been onboard!

And for once – words just fail me.  It is sensational.

This is just a little sneak preview – the work that’s been done on the interpretation and presentation of Nomadic’s story is absolutely stunning, and I promised not to spoil any of the surprises for when (not if) you visit yourself.

Getting ready to go on board (along with the brand new SS Nomadic visitor crew, who were also experiencing it for the first time!):

Perfectly-reproduced floors, original benches upon which Molly Brown’s bum once sat, rivets and metal and wood of Titanic antiquity:

And lovely details and windows into the past – little sections which have been left unrestored, in all their 102-year-old glory:

Now I know I’ve been known to get a bit enthusiastic about these things.  Rusty old coal-cart tracks out on the slipways send me into raptures of joy.  But I really, really thought that Nomadic was absolutely out-of-this-world.

Exciting times!

Sad news this week – one of The Dock’s founder members, Philip Patterson, passed away at the weekend.

Among his many, many other accomplishments, Philip was there right at the inception of The Dock, and was one of the people who believed in the idea – and moved and shook whatever needed to be moved and shaken to create the post of ‘Chaplain to the Titanic Quarter’.  He created the parish boundaries which are still in place today, re-drawing church geography so that the TQ was set aside as a unique area in its own right.

He was also part of a day that was in many ways Day One of the dream of The Dock – a trip to St Peter’s Barge in Canary Wharf back in late 2008 to see how church-on-a-boat worked in the London docklands, and to start envisioning the way in which some of those ideas might take root in Belfast.  He watched my boundlessly enthusiastic, utterly naive baby steps towards Dock-world with a wry smile that always hid a fierce support and unstinting encouragement.

He was a steady hand on the original Dock Board of Directors, guiding the project through days of brainstorming, through the formation of the company, launching the Business Plan, appointing new Chaplains, signing the Meanwhile Lease, opening the cafe…

As each new crazy idea came along, he greeted it with quizzical good humour – and then got behind it with all his heart and soul.  He simultaneously dreamed the big dreams and drilled into the little details.  We wouldn’t be here today without him, and we will miss him terribly.