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“Up the Junction” is a melancholy song from 1979 by the British band Squeeze. It’s all about British culture and the lives of working-class Londoners.

The title is British slang for being in a bad situation. It’s also the name of a gritty 1963 book of short stories by Nell Dunn depicting life in the slums of Battersea, an industrial district in South London. Battersea is home to the massive railway station of Clapham Junction, one of the busiest railway stations in Europe.

In 1965, the book was adapted for BBC television. In 1968, a film version was released. By the time Squeeze came along in the early 1970s, Dunn’s realistic portrait of the working class was well-known to Londoners. To the band, a song in the same vein must have seemed appropriate.

In the song, a young man tells about falling in love, having a child, failing to keep his life on track, and losing his family. Alone in his apartment, he accepts responsibility and laments that he is “up the junction.”

The song also is notable for having no chorus. None needed.

You should be able to follow the lyrics pretty well despite the slang. Tip: “Railway Arms” is British slang for a pub.

Up the Junction

By Squeeze, 1979
Written by Chris Difford and Glenn Tilbrook

I never thought it would happen
With me and the girl from Clapham.
Out on the windy common,
That night I ain’t forgotten,
When she dealt out the rations.
With some or other passions,
I said, “you are a lady.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “I may be.”

We moved into a basement
With thoughts of our engagement.
We stayed in by the telly,
Although the room was smelly.
We spent our time just kissing,
The Railway Arms, we’re missing,
But love had got us hooked up,
And all our time it took up.

I got a job with Stanley.
He said I’d come in handy,
And started me on Monday,
So I had a bath on Sunday.
I worked eleven hours
And bought the girl some flowers.
She said she’d seen a doctor,
And nothing now could stop her.

I worked all through the winter,
The weather brass and bitter.
I put away a tenner
Each week to make her better.
And when the time was ready,
We had to sell the telly.
Late evenings by the fire,
With little kicks inside her.

This morning at four fifty,
I took her rather nifty,
Down to an incubator,
Where thirty minutes later,
She gave birth to a daughter,
Within a year a walker.
She looked just like her mother,
If there could be another.

And now she’s two years older.
Her mother’s with a soldier.
She left me when my drinking
Became a proper stinging.
The devil came and took me
From bar to street to bookie.
No more nights by the telly.
No more nights nappies smelling.

Alone here in the kitchen,
I feel there’s something missing.
I’d beg for some forgiveness,
But begging’s not my business.
And she won’t write a letter,
Although I always tell her.
And so it’s my assumption,
I’m really up the junction.