It’s Friday night-1994

[Cositseleventhirtyandtheclubisjumpinjumpin]

How old are you, what are you doing?

I’m 16, almost due to do GCSE’s and have an amazing summer, only bettered by summer of 1995, the following year.
I’m out, either at a house party or drinking in the park or around the village. I spent ages getting ready in crop top or maybe a body, oversized denim or check shirt, usually tied around my waist, kickers & jeans. Hair long and wavy, coffee shimmer lipstick, bronzer and heavy eyeliner. Met up with the other four friends in our group to drink vodka or cider, smoke Embassy number one and probably some weed later on. Excitement’s in the air as it is every Friday night, we’ll probably meet up with the boys two years above us, maybe drive around in cars, possibly go with one of them (snog/kiss) but the most fun part is when all five of us girls get drunk together and howl with laughter, rarely has there been friendships as precious as those early ones.

This Friday night-I’m 48, lay in bed next to my sleeping 7 year old, live abroad and am a sensible adult.

I was in my first job, having moved from Scotland, selling advertising space on the phone for a magazine publisher in central London . Terrible job! Fortunately, it was next door to a pub and we all piled out of work at 5pm and straight into the pub for the evening . Happy days!

I’ve got a one year old and a four year old. I’m probably drinking a second or third bottle of wine with my mate with the same age children while the kids are all asleep upstairs. My mate is probably rolling a joint. The house didn’t go on fire and no one had to suddenly be able to drive somewhere.

I'm sure that a lot of people think that their teenage years and/or 20s were particularly good for music just because that's what they were in to at the time. Nevertheless the 90s had some brilliant bands. Cocteau Twins, Dead Can Dance, Curve, Cranes, Nirvana, Dinosaur Jr, Ride, Cranberries, Madder Rose, Chemical Brothers, Future Sound of London, Underworld, Portishead... the list goes on.

Pubs were great back then. Disco lights squeezed into a corner next to the pool table. Djs that masqueraded as builders during the week. Mostly it was hot, sweaty and standing room only. All your school mates letting loose and all those incredibly sophisticated sixth form boys on the pull. Like you say, all the pubs had bouncers, all the bouncers knew you were underage and and had celebrated your "18th birthday" at least half a dozen times over the previous 3 months. Heady days.

I was 16 too op and about to sit GCSEs also, id probably be out at the pubs drinking with my fake id that I bought for £3.50 (it was a Leicester Uni Nus card!!) or I’d be on the park drinking white lightning or MD20/20!

Same age as you OP, but I would have been up to my eyes in revision. And I had a Saturday job so I’d not really ever go out on a Friday night. Once exams were over though we’d go out in town on Sat nights to the local nightclubs and pubs, never got asked for ID and drank loads of Castaway and Diamond White. Maybe a taboo and lemonade or Malibu and Coke if feeling flush! 🤣 wore a lot of ribbed tops, and cropped tops, wraparound long straight skirts, very short checked skirts, and a bit of vintage stuff too, like 70s leather jackets.
tonight I’m lying on the sofa, drinking sparkling water and listening to classical music, whilst intermittently yelling at teen son to go to bed. Teen daughter is coincidentally also 16 and also revising for her exams.
The sparking water on a Friday night is unusual though, and I will be having some booze with DH and a few friends this weekend!

I don't miss going to the pub and coming home with all your clothes stinking of cigarettes though.

Same here! About to do GCSEs. We'd have been out to the pub. No need to be 18 then. Rarely needed our fake IDs. Happy days.

25, probably on the sofa watching the enormous video collection of my first husband, then my fiancé, and gaining the first of several stone that piled on during that marriage. Or possibly watching Changing Rooms, so that we could choose to decorate our lovely house in headache-inducing shades of orange and pea green. (It’s nice to see on Rightmove that since then it has been bought by people with taste.)

Student Union. 69p vodka and orange at the bar, then down to the basement club for indie night, dancing for hours. Dressed in hipster bootcut jeans or cords, Vans and a little strappy rainbow top. Marlboro Lights in pocket and the 50p student Union minibus home after hours.

All of that would kill me now!

I’m 20 and unexpectedly pregnant. This will turn out to be the best thing in life. I am now going to be a grandma. I have never been happier.

We are in the second quarter of the 21st century, how can that be right when Millennium was only 5 years ago??????

Probably either babysitting someone’s kids so they can go out for a bit of cash, or babysitting my parents’ other kids for nothing, and desperately hoping that there is some point to the school work I was doing and that it would lead somewhere even though I knew even then that all the rich kids with nice mummies and daddieswould always have easier lives than me.

May bank holiday weekend 1994, I was 22.
I went back to my university (I graduated the summer before, some of my mates had done languages and an extra year) . Stayed in a room in the same halls I lived in in my first year. It felt odd.
I had a great weekend with my friends, we went to a beach, we watched the Eurovision Song contest on the Saturday. ( it was the one where they had Riverdance as the interval act).

I have very vivid memories of that weekend .

How old? And what about now?

I was 16 too, but lived in the middle of nowhere so nights out were rare. I loved my life and my friends and I was mostly studying to achieve my master plan of leaving and going to the big city.

PS Gentle Reader, I did make it to the Big City.

In my mid 20’s and partying hard and having the time of my life. Now late 50,s and a carer for my mum who has dementia. Life was so much easier back then

Please can people say their age then and what you’re doing now in comparison-i’m nosey 😂It’s actually quite interesting

Assuming it's May, I'm 9. I've been to ballet and swimming. I imagine I'd be in bed by now as I've got more dance classes in the morning.

25, in the pub.

Yes ribbed tops and checked short skirts!

So much amazing music

And playing pool smoking a cig and jukeboxes with Oasis on

Loving this thread OP. Bringing back some memories for sure. Have the Spaceman theme from the Levi's ad running around my head now. Google tells me this was 1995 so technically a year out but very much of this era.

I was 14 so might have been sleeping at a mates, watching IT or something else scaring the shit out of us. I was about to have 2 years of a really rough time - later 90s were much more fun for me!
now I’m loafing on the sofa watching lucifer planning art projects for the bank holiday and chatting to DD and DH - how do I now have an almost teenager??