Sorry folks – Dock Cafe is closed again today (Saturday) – unless we all want to walk up into the hills and help Tegan dig her car out of a snowdrift…?!

Colin’s market stall will re-appear another day and Dock Cafe life will return to normal as soon as any of us can actually get near the place!

For all of you contemplating journeys and activities today, please take care out there…. Sometimes the great thing about a Snow Day is that you realise that the world still turns without you rushing around doing all the things you had planned to do.  If you can, stay in and stay safe!

Remember Snow Days from school?  If the bus hadn’t come by the time of the school bell, you could slide happily back home to a day of snowball fights and hot chocolates in front of the fire – bliss!

Which is a way of letting you know that The Dock is taking a Snow Day today, as most of the volunteers are, by the sounds of things, back in a hunter-gatherer dark age, trapped behind snowdrifts and surviving without electricity (especially spare a thought for Tegan, co-ordinating cancelling the volunteers and the bakery order with her mobile phone’s fading battery, with no electricity to recharge it when it dies – gulp!)

For those of you who can, batten down the hatches, light the fire and relax!

And in the hope that our second ice-age might have abated a little by tomorrow, Saturday in Dock Cafe will see another new idea tried-out in the new pop-up market stall:  Colin’s range of funky-sounding health and beauty products.  Come and bag a (healthy) bargain!

(Or: An Ace Space To Place A Mace…)

Exciting developments at The ARC apartments: Dock Cafe is about to have some next-door neighbours!

Work began this week fitting-out the unit on the other side of Dock Cafe’s partition-wall – it’s going to be a Mace local shop.  At long last the Titanic Quarter will have somewhere to buy Sunday papers, Pot Noodles, loo rolls and all the other necessities of life!

It’s great news for Dock Cafe – as anyone looking for a comfy seat to eat their Mace sandwiches (or hot food – there’s going to be a deli counter) and read their Mace newspapers can pop next door into The Dock – our ‘Eat Your Piece In Peace’ policy will still be in force!

And the Mace isn’t the end of the story – more new neighbours are due to start using some of the neighbouring units over the next few months, offering everything from Segway tours to sail training…  watch this space…

Life in the Titanic Quarter is happening!

The day gets off to a fabulous start.  As we open Dock Cafe we’re visited by an amazing group of kids from Fleming Fulton school, who have a tour of Dock Cafe before getting stuck into the juice and biscuits.

They stop off for a prayer in the Prayer Garden before heading out to see the Titanic Quarter…

…and of course the unstoppable Titanorak gives them a tour of the Titanic slipways.  (More great pics here)

Then it’s back to the cafe in time for lunch – a whirl of people meeting, eating, drinking, thinking.  Some of the guys from PRONI try the place for the first time; the students bag all the good seats (but we love them anyway); the cafe is filled with colour and life, different accents and languages and conversations.

Ciaran calls in and it’s so good to see him that a bit of man-huggage happens.

An ARC-apartment resident, one of our very first customers and first volunteers, now moved off to exotic climes as part of his job.

He’s back in Belfast for a week and Dock Cafe is where he’s checking in to catch up with the gang.  It’s great to see him.

The cafe gets a bit more chilled as the afternoon progresses.

The nice bright seats at the window are used for some away-from-the-office work on the cafe wi-fi (with occasional breaks to watch the world go by).

The comfy sofas become the scene of an intense chess match  (I think Piers wins).

Evening falls over the Titanic Quarter, the lights go on across Belfast, the glow of the Dock Cafe heaters gets cosier as the night grows darker.  The Belfast Met Christian Union gather in the Prayer Garden for their weekly meeting, filling the space with prayers and chat and ideas.  They’re getting ready for a big outreach night in Dock Cafe next week; it sounds like it’s going to be great.  (Although they’ve asked me to speak, which might be a bad idea).

Last few customers, last pot of coffee.  A guy calls in to talk about using the cafe as the location for shooting a music video.  Two customers at the table are having a language lesson.  7pm, door locked, time to wash up and hit the road, with that lovely sense that this has been a good day, well lived.

Another day of Life in the Titanic Quarter.