As if you needed another reason to visit Belfast’s best (only) Honesty Box Cafe…!

The Dock is hosting a fantastic photographic exhibition (starting this week and on display until Christmas) – winners of a photography competition run by the Shorts Camera Club.  All the photos have a local connection – familiar and unfamiliar sights from around the Titanic Quarter and East Belfast – seen from new angles and perspectives, taken by people with an eye for a great photo.  Don’t miss the chance to come in and have a look while they’re on public display!

And a few of my own humble efforts – not exactly photography-competition-worthy, but a few snapshots of life in Dock Cafe…  On one side of the cafe today, along with the usual mix of cafe customers chilling, eating, drinking, playing chess and strumming the Titanic Guitars, this group from the Met College held their seminar (they’re all studying fashion) over coffees and krispie buns:

And on the other side of the coffee bar, Ken and David dangled acrobatically on ladders and scaffolding to complete a long-intended Dock Cafe project: to fit curtains at the dividing wall so that all our lovely toasty warmth doesn’t disappear into the unused area of the shop unit:

Last night we gathered in that toasty warmth for Titanic Quarter’s first ever community forum – an chance for residents, developers and neighbourhood police to meet over mince pies and fruit punch (my own recipe, after every single shop had run out of pre-prepared stuff!)  It was great to be part of a new community just beginning to connect and write the first chapter of its story.  And, if I do say so myself, the mulled fruit punch was awesome.

Well we’re back!  The Bennetts have been spending a few days camping (or glamping really – as it’s in a nice warm campervan with blown-air heating and hot running water) in the wilds of Co. Tipperary.

We also found a wee tea shop in Kilkenny which, for the first and only time, made the Suki tea selection at Dock Cafe look small by comparison…

It was something of a heartbreak, it must be said, to travel home from the mist-shrouded hills of the Glen of Aherlow to a world of water cannons, petrol bombs and messy, ragged emotions.  A hundred-and-one blog posts wrote themselves, deleted themselves, reconsidered and re-wrote themselves in my mind as we travelled along – but for now I’ll choose not to add any more words and opinions to a situation already over-bulging with voices.

What I will do is turn those words to prayers: I’m planning to join this gathering at 8:30am at the City Hall on Saturday morning – a chance to pray for peace at the place which has been the focus of so much hurt and hatred over this past week.  Check out the link and hopefully see you there!

And now: “The bit you didn’t see” or “The Man Who Went Looking For A Boat… And Found Something Much Better Instead”

Friday evening, and time for Part 2! Today, “The Man Who Runs Into A Few Snags”

Hello lovely people. Chris isn’t blogging for a few days – he’s left me at the helm! So in his absence, we have a trilogy for you. Tyrone Productions – of the famed UTV ratings-hit documentary all about The DOCK, “Mission Titanic – has given us permission to let you all, worldwide, watch the programme on our site.

Popcorn and ices at the ready, then, lights down and drum roll please for Part 1: The Man Who Goes Looking For A Boat.