[one of them Charlie was lost at sea in WWII] and I have only the vaguest recollections of my uncles Stephen and Danny (who used to send me, when I was a child, authentic magazines of the American West......my Father being a fellow student of the genre used to be more excited than I was when Danny’s packages arrived).

I also remember meeting my aunt Kathleen when I was walking down Hill Street with my Mother sometime in the late Sixties. That is the only memory I have of Kathleen who married and settled in Belfast. Her home is at the foot of the steps leading up to the turnstiles at Windsor Park. Walking down Hill Street with my Mother was the most horrendous experience for an impatient child eager to get to Kilmorey Street and the bus back to our ‘bijou’, that compact abode on the South Down Riviera that is Warrenpoint.

 My Mother knew everybody and would chat for an interminable length of time to ‘catch up with the gossip’. However trips to Newry did have their rewards. No visit was ever complete without calling with my Grandmother McCann/Aunt Sue in Chapel Street and the nearby River Street home of my Aunt Mary[Dean]. Sue and Mary were only alike in terms of their innate kindness and the warmth of their personalities. In many ways they were quite different. Mary was a woman of some polish, sharp intellect and upright deportment. She timed each entrance to perfection. Sue was more soft, somewhat more naïve but always laughing or smiling. She’d have been herself in an era.

 Not so with Mary Dean. Had my Aunt Mary been born into different circumstances she may have been a classically trained pianist or an actress of Garboesque presence. My Mother always said she was a performer growing up in Chapel Street. I have only just learnt that she was something of an apothecary...she might even have made a living in a travelling tent show in America’s Deep South! Her version of the "Galway Shawl" was delivered with such passion at my sisters Vera’s wedding some years ago that grown men were moved to tears.

It was on one of these trips to Newry with my Mother and sister Geraldine that we called to the dimly lit home of Mary Dean in River Street. After plying us with lemonade and biscuits she emptied her purse of threepenny bits and sixpences and instructed my cousins Olwen and Liam to take us to McClelland’s shop.  On the way back Olwen and Liam lifted us up onto the Canal wall and in the distance I could see a Fair/Carnival in full swing [this was about 1965/66 and on the site I think from memory of what is now the Buttercrane Centre. I immediately made up my mind that I wanted to go and confided this to my Aunt Mary on our return to her house. Mary made immediate provision for Olwen and Liam to take us younger children over to the Fair. Olwen being a teenager and having other more pressing engagements to attend to protested with a strident intensity. But I was most insistent and sensing this quarter of reluctance played my ace card...I threw a tantrum. I won hands down and whilst Liam, always of a sunny nature fully complied with my whim by giving me a piggy-back ride, Olwen, taking up the rear with Geraldine, cast me a glance which suggested she could quite happily have throttled me.

We youngsters had a splendid time - as I’m sure did Liam. Olwen’s afternoon was ruined or at least any plans rendered somewhat askew. (Olwen, if it is any consolation. Ii have grown up to be a man who detests any interruption to my meticulously-planned diary, so I have carried a lot of guilt for the last forty years at having ruined yours that afternoon.

The same day we concluded our trip with a visit to my Granny’s in Chapel Street.  My Grandmother McCann was always dressed in black, and with her shawl and her gray hair pulled back in a bun, she had all the appearance of a Sicilian or Corsican elder. However instead of being served a full bodied Chianti with cold cuts and cheeses, my Aunt Sue plied us with more lemonade and snowballs from my cousins [Seanie, Willie, and Brendan’s] private stash.

Whilst in Chapel Street I accompanied Sue on an errand to a nearby shop. Just opposite Sue’s house some local lads had painted a full size set of goal posts on a wall and were playing football. They must have had an uneven number because they asked Sue if I could make up the teams. Sue said an emphatic NO!

 "Youse only want to put him in goals for shootin in", she rightly alleged.

Sue, like her oldest boy P J was a fine judge of footballing talent, spotting that I had the makings of a cultured fullback and not a goalie.  Inadvertently one of the lads lost control of the football and it bounced towards us. I’ll never forget what happened next.  Sue caught it on the sweetest of half volleys [little or no back lift] and it flew into the top corner of the goal. With a minimum of fuss we continued on our errand....Peter McParland may have matched the volley but he would not have achieved the power, whilst big Pat Jennings might just have got his finger tips to it but he could not have kept it out...

Well, that’s how I remember it.

Being Warrenpoint born and reared I always thought the best thing about Newry was the road out of it but this would be untrue and unkind. It is a place full of character and larger-than-life characters. My aunts -like my Mother - are testimony to that. They encompassed all the best traits of human nature; they faced the worst of experiences that life could throw at them, confronted them, beat them and emerged even stronger as a result. Speaking personally I feel I am a poor imitation of them in terms of their ability to cope with human adversity. I may favour my Father’s lineage in terms of personality and reserved nature but I’m proud of my Chapel Street links.  I trust the upcoming Re-union will be a roaring success. Memory Lane can be a painful address to visit, but on this occasion it should be anything but that. Hopefully it will provide people with a forum to pay tribute to happier,less-complicated times and to those people whose memory is as vivid today as ever it was before.

 Finally as an adult I would drop in from time to time to see Sue and Mary, coming home from Belfast on a Friday I would stop at Mary Dean’s Boat Street apartment and I would immediately be dispatched to the pub next door for a bottle of Tonic water to sooth her innards. I would then enjoy an hour or so of her wisdom [always dramatically delivered] before heading for home. I also one night after failing to secure a lift home from Newry, repaired to Sue’s house in Chapel Street seeking refuge for the night. After greeting me in a rather colourful fashion Sue ushered me into Willie’s and Seanie’s room. I never suffered such serious sleep deprivation in all my life, so loud did the boys snore. At one stage I was convinced the Exxon Valdez was berthing in Boat Street.