Up the Junction

Album: Cool For Cats (1979)
Charted: 2
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  • 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 in to 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 Writer/s: CHRISTOPHER HENRY DIFFORD, GLENN MARTIN TILBROOK
    Publisher: Universal Music Publishing Group
    Lyrics licensed and provided by LyricFind

Comments: 8

  • Luke from Yorkshire'Up The Junction' not only refers to the condition he's in, but also to the girl, who's from Clapham, a major railway junction.
  • Carnby Yarst from Furness PeninsulaThe line 'no more nights nappies smelling' tells us that she took the baby.
  • Pete from Nottingham, EnglandThe girl takes the baby with her when she leaves, hence no more nappies, and the narrator sitting alone in his kitchen in the end.
  • David from Maplewood, NjThe amazing and infinitely catchy rhyme that opens the song is a reference to where the novel and play it is based on takes place. Clapham Junction is a railroad station and surrounding area in Battersea, a working class district southwest of Central London. The junction is actually the busiest in Europe, seeing 2000 trains daily.

    Gina, the video you refer to is actually the band's appearance on Top of the Pops. They thought it would be a humorous swipe at lip-synching to play the wrong instruments. In the video for the song, everyone's playing the right instruments.
  • Gina from Escondido, CaDidn't anyone notice in this video no one is playing the right instruments? Jools on guitar, Glenn on drums,etc,
  • Darren from Charlott, NcI think you'll find the daughter has gone with her mother, thus the line "no more nappies smelly"
  • Zabadak from London, EnglandThis was released on purple vinyl in the UK.
  • Zabadak from London, EnglandUp The Junction followed the band's then-tradition of naming their singles after films, following Goodbye Girl and Cool For Cats.
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