It is a fine collection of Northern lights. Seamus Heaney is to open an exhibition of paintings by Basil Blackshaw and sculpture by Carolyn Mulholland. He has known the two northerners "since the beginning of my own life as a writer," he tells us. "Both of them are like people on a secret errand, passing themselves off as sociable citizens just like the rest of us, but in reality they belong to a different jurisdiction of the spirit."
All eyes turn to the pair of them, smirking away at the idea. The two artists have drawn a great selection of fans to the Peppercanister Gallery at 3, Herbert Street.
Among them are Cherith McKinstry, an artist herself, remembering the first time she met Blackshaw - when he was 19 with "lovely, thick black hair and rosy cheeks". Now white-haired, he is here with his partner, Helen Falloon. Davy Hammond, the singer (and film-maker) from Belfast, enters. One of his next singing engagements will be in Dunlewey, Co Donegal at the end of this month. Also from the North are close and long-standing friends of Mulholland, Ruth and Alan Rankin.
Graham Gingles from Ballygalley in Co Antrim with his partner, Jude Stephens, an anthropologist and sometime model for Blackshaw, have come south to view the work also. And sure enough, Jude does feature in Seated Nude. Marie Heaney is looking forward to the rest of the summer and relaxing after all the travelling. In the autumn, she has a children's book - with illustrations by P.J. Lynch - to be called The Name Upon the Harp, coming out.
Mulholland is shy and enigmatic, explaining that her tall, dramatic bronze piece, Flower, has the sharp, metallic look of an object that comes alive in the toy-shop at night to catch mice. "You can imagine it scuttling around," she says. And do you know, you can.