A GUEST POSTING by WALTER
http://afewgoodtimesinmylife.blogspot.co.uk/
Hi Jim,
For long times I didn’t gave you a guest contribution and now there are two in row. For me, I always liked songs that told me a story and so your new series pleases me. There are a lot of songs that explaine in a few words what is life about. One of them I love most is by Squeeze – Up The Junction. Nothing more or less a short story about a simple love affair and what could happen. It doesn’t end in an happy end. For me it is a story many people could understand and probably feel about what happened to the main charactor in this song. It is not a depressive song but one of the best stories about what can happen at the kitchen sink. All in all a simple and true song about life.
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
mp3 : Squeeze – Up The Junction
THE NEW VINYL VILLAIN 
Perhaps when the XTC series is complete, a Squeeze singles series? Just a thought. I know there must be several B-sides and and extras I haven’t heard. What a long career with (relatively) few severe/bad dips in quality.
Great call Walter. I never grow tired of hearing this perfectly constructed song. The emotional jump from verse 5 to verse 6 gets me everytime.
Spot on, Swede. Great pick by Walter. I always liked Squeeze’s ‘Vicky Verky’ as a song story, but it’s not quite the same as this one, ‘out on the windy common…’
Yes, Walter, yes! Great choice. Barry may be on to something too.
Fantastic choice Walter!
It really is a proper sing along at the top of your voice song, and the story is like something you could imagine the characters in a film (in black & white of course) getting played by Albert Finney and Rita Tushingham. Only thing that grates is the line about taking his other half down to an incubator, I take it Difford & Tilbrook hadn’t experienced childbirth (so to speak) at that point in their lives, or they would have known an incubator is where the finished product goes afterwards.
Yeah, great song by a great band. Unique songwriting.
Incidentally their other great iconic song from the period Cool for Cats contains a very funny but completely un PC line that passed the late 1970s Radio 1 censors. Just thinking about how Mike Read banned Relax a few years later.
I’m invited in for coffee and I give the dog a bone……. indeed!