Memoirs: Penultimate

Watching the grain barges negotiating the several bridges over the canal on their way to Sand’s Mill.

When it snowed we sleighed in Corr’s field which was just across the lane from our houses.

Picking up my ‘Dan Dare’ comic at Savage’s paper shop on Monaghan Street every week.

My Mom and I buying me boots in Joe Mc Guigan’s shoe shop on Monaghan Street right after the war.  The boots only lasted a few days.  Turns out the soles were cardboard.  I’m sure we got a refund.

Picking up the weekly grocery order at Anderson‘s on Sugar Island and occasional medical supplies at Connor’s on Hill Street.

Three times a week Pat Durkin milked his cows in a nearby field and delivered milk to us from a gallon can hanging from the handlebar of his bicycle.  He also had a Yorkshire terrier that sat on a little seat he attached to the bar of his bike. It sat with its rear end on the seat and its front paws over the handlebars.

Our bread came, on Saturday morning, from Inglis’s Bakery in Newry by horse drawn, two wheeled van. The bread was so fresh that when the breadserver opened the doors on the van the steam was still rising from the bread.

I don’t know if it was simply a matter of timing or if it was the result of pulling that loaded breadvan up the Camlough Road hill and up the lane.   But invariably the horse had to totally relieve itself somewhere along the driveway that serviced the back of our houses.  So it became the responsibility of the adjacent house’s lucky tenant to conduct cleanup operations accordingly.

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