Silbert Nobel Submission: “Up the Junction” and the Space-Time Continuum

Or maybe you have to be nominated for a Nobel Prize? Just in case could somebody maybe re-Tweet this? OK thanks. Use the hashtag #physics, as I think that’s where time travel would fit.

Before I get into the “meat” of my theory (theorem? proof? I should probably look this stuff up in the FAQs on nobleprize.org), let me provide a little background. I recently loaded the 1982 compilation album Singles — 45’s and Under, by the British group Squeeze, onto my iPod. If there was a greatest hits of greatest-hits albums, this would be on there. Fantastic stuff, top to bottom.

I was walking down the street one night, and the 1979 single “Up the Junction” comes on. I owned this song even before I had the 45’s and Under LP, because it was on the soundtrack of the 1982 film Brimstone and Treacle. I’ve never seen that movie but at the time I would purchase anything connected to the band the Police. And that discount cassette contained several songs by Sting and/or the Police. And also “Up the Junction.”

So it’s a song I’ve heard many, many times, and probably in my top-two all-time Squeeze songs (because, come on, are you going to deny “Pulling Mussels (From the Shell)”?). But here I was listening to it for the first time in a long while, and with fresh ears you might say. It suddenly dawned on me, the song holds the key to the space-time continuum. (Note to the Nobel committee: I don’t really know what the space-time continuum is but I heard about it in Back to the Future.) (Man, that Lea Thompson was really something, wasn’t she?)

I will now walk you through the song’s lyrics (by Chris Difford, with music by Glen Tilbrook). I Googled the lyrics, and no thank you, I do not want it as a ringtone. I shall annotate all scientific-like as we proceed.

I never thought it would happen
with me and the girl from Clapham
out on a 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.”

As the song begins, we meet our narrator, and he tells us about a night that he ain’t forgotten. Thus, we can assume that he is in the present reminiscing about the past. We can also assume that Clapham is a place in England, and a “common” is some sort of British thing that offers no protection from the elements.

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.

Time-wise we’ve moved forward a bit (see my submission to the Holberg International Memorial Prize, “British Post-War Youth and the Average Length of Time Between Meeting and ‘Shacking Up'”). Telly is television; they watch it there too except it is just Monty Python reruns 24 hours a day. The Railway Arms is a common name for a pub. I looked that one up and yet for some reason I would have you believe that I didn’t type “Clapham” into the search window.

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.

Time is still progressing, except for a brief step one day into the past to attend to some hygiene-related matters. Our protagonist has obtained some undefined employment seemingly not under the aegis of a labor union. Meanwhile, our leading lady has become impregnated. Paul Ryan don’t preach, she’s keepin’ her baby.

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
and little kicks inside her.

Three months go by in this verse, and without the assistance of Craigslist, a television is sold. Hey, how many times can you watch that Dead Parrot sketch, anyway? OK now, pay very close attention to this next bit:

This morning at 4:50
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.

So the narrator is speaking to us today (though perhaps a bit groggily, as he’s been awake since at least ten to five in the morning). But don’t get too comfortable, because before you know it, a half-hour goes by, and then—whoosh!—365 days. We’re through the wormhole, folks.

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.

Two more years gone. We are hurtling headlong into the future, and also learning a British term for diapers. Evidently the Railway Arms’ sweet embrace became too hard to ignore. (Ten bonus points for foreshadowing, Mr. Difford.) No woman, no daughter, no TV set, but his highly attuned olfactory sense still very much intact. And the song concludes:

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.

The brilliant line of resignation, “Begging’s not my business,” remains on my epitaph shortlist (along with “Wazzup?!?”). We finish in the present… or was three years ago the present? Proof positive of parallel realities. This temporal discombobulation distracts us from the fact that this highly melodic song has no chorus whatsoever and that we don’t actually know what the title phrase means (though from context we can perhaps assume it is similar to being up the creek, likely sans paddle).

I will be live-blogging from the Nobel Award Ceremonies. Does anyone know if there’s a Red Roof Inn in Stockholm?