'We stand, the three of us, me, Sylvie and Rube, pressed up against the saloon door, brown ales clutched in our hands. Rube, neck stiff so as not to shake her beehive, stares sultrily round the packed pub.'

The girls - Rube, Lily and Sylvie - work at McCrindle's sweet factory during the week, and on Saturday they go up the Junction in their clattering stilettos. In these uninhibited, spirited vignettes of young women's lives in South London in the sixties, money is scarce and enjoyment to be grabbed while it can.

Nell Dunn shot to fame with Up the Junction (1963) and Poor Cow (1967), both of which became successful films. Up the Junction won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize.