"Up the Junction' is a rather dreary tale The nostalgia was there though, especially for me whose both sets of grandparents lived at the Junction and with whom I spent an awful lot of my time, especially my mother's parents. The factory in the film was the Chelsea's Chocolate Liqueur works. The café they should have gone to was just around the corner (it still had adverts on the window for Turf and Airman cigarettes when it was demolished around 1966). In fact I got a bit confused about some of the other locations too. Being 'Up the Junction' I would have thought the girl would have gone down the Northcote Market, but it wasn't that one she went to (no railway embankment down there!). It might have been the one down Battersea High Street, though even that may not be right as I don't think the stalls went down as far as the railway. I have pondered where the shot of Pete & Polly looking over the Junction was taken. The bright light on the sky line was the Granada Cinema at the top of Plough Road, but for them to have been looking across from the north like that they would have had to have been up high so they must have been on top of one of the factories in York Road (the glucose or gin factories? too far west for the candle works). Pollys flat: I couldn't place it from anywhere I knew down the Junction, but thought it was either near Battersea Park area, possibly around Sheepcote Lane, or maybe the Princess Head area of Battersea. I couldn't place the abortionist place that was supposedly in Wimbledon either. It was fun, though, racking my brains trying to identify places. On the Web a site says many of the scenes are in fact of Wandsworth. My Nanny on my mother's side used to complain about 'some rich tart, what lived in the house that backed on to hers'. She said she was 'a dirty cow', didn't keep her windows clean and had curtains that were in tatters. She also moaned about the fact the girl and her lover(s) often used to stand naked at the bedroom window, and she knew my young aunt and her mates knew it too and used to watch if they got the chance. Yes, it was Nell Dunn they were watching. When the book, "Up the Junction", came out my aunt got it and then passed it to Nan. Neither thought it portrayed working class Battersea. Having now, at last, seen the film, I would agree. The houses certainly were dilapidated and the infrastructure of the places literally rotting in some cases (including that of my Nan's), but the women had pride and they were ardent and active cleaners and very critical of any woman who wasn't. If my grandmother's place smelt of anything it was carbolic! Family violence as in the film? I suppose so, I was not personally aware of it though I do remember hearing my Mum and Nan talking about local men, badgered by their wives, being sent to 'sort out' a man who had made a habit of hitting his wife. Certainly no one in their right mind would have tried getting physical with the women in my mother's family. Abortions? yes they happened and everyone seemed to know who had had one and where to go if you needed one. As a Rocker I was interested in the motorcycles. Like the hairstyles, they reflected the early 60's rather than 1968 when the film was made, though I did see one bike with a C registration (1965). Triumph changed from 'gate' to 'eyebrow' tank badges in 1966, which made aging the bikes easy. The lad's leather jackets were unadorned and they didn't wear helmets nor gloves, which was very untypical of us Rockers of the period and their riding was laughable. Not sure they would have tolerated a scooter riding Mod in their company either. Although the story was not strong, and the portrayal of much of working class life insulting, it did make me smile at times listening to voices from much of my childhood and youth and the memories the scenery stirred (even if they weren't all from the Junction). I could almost recall the smell of the Junction: leaving the station the smell of rotting bananas from the Fyfe's storage and cellulose paint spray from the metal cabinet factory that stood side by side under the arches, the stench of horse excrement from the totters stables, the drift of stench from the Glucose and Gin factories. Then at my paternal grandfather's house the smell of roses and lilies in my grand-dad's garden and the smell of cooking at my maternal grandmother's house. A different world in which children played hop scotch and cricket in the road and parents never worried about their kid's welfare or how they were behaving as the old folk, sitting outside their houses, kept an eye on them and disciplined them if need be. Every house used to open when you 'pulled on the string' and no one complained if you went in to use their toilet as long as you called out when you went in. many the time a bookies runner came through my Nan's calling out 'Coppers on me tail missus' and dropping a few coins as he shot through into the back yard, over the back wall and into another house. Then there were Saturday nights sitting outside the Duke pub, drinking lemonade and eating crisps whilst using lolly sticks to prise dirt from between the paving slabs or sailing paper boats in the gutter whilst the adults were all in the pub having a drink and a knees up. It was worth watching the film just for bringing the past back to me.
Review of Up the Junction
