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 early 20s and spent 1994 travelling Australia, working occasionally and partying lots! I went out there on my own and met some amazing people and am still friends with some of them now. Fell in love and had my heart broken but mostly had the best year!

19, student, living in Manchester, making the absolute bloody most of the incredible music scene. Most Friday nights I’d still be going strong from the night before, might have had a few hours sleep before starting up again, might have just kept going, depending on which chemicals and which squat parties and which djs and which sound systems and which friends….with every chance we’d keep going through until Sunday morning, one way or another.

Now? On the sofa with the dog, procrastinating going to bed after a lovely family dinner. But those days aren’t entirely behind me….I still go out dancing although these days I’m powered by loving the music and maybe a Diet Coke!

iD purposes for what? Ive put mine now so i’m screwed if so!

I’m 28, living in Tenerife after having worked in Seville at Expo 92 and not quite ready to return to the UK. Had 3 great years there before deciding I missed the seasons and returned in 96, with a partner who turned out to have a smack habit and ditched pronto. But in 94 I would have been working in a restaurant, having beach evenings and clubbing. My mum had died 4 years previously and my dad died while I was in Tenerife so I was probably a bit lost tbh.

Studying for my leaving cert (A levels) in Dublin (well it's Friday night so I was probably drunk somewhere tbf) with no idea that my life had barely started and I had the most amazing decade ahead of me.

See, if it was 'exactly' 1st May 1994. I would be ten, in bed and trying to process Ayrton Senna effectively dying on live television. Love F1, still very much do. But that was the first fatality I ever had to try and deal with.

Memories of my Dad on the phone to my Grandparents. 'They're ok..... Just quiet.'

Otherwise, early night and Milk.

It was the year my family moved to the USA - to the middle of nowhere.

I hated it. Freezing cold winters. I missed all my friends and family and never settled. Didn't make any close friends. Friday nights were spent watching movies in the basement while it was -20 outside. The only happy memories I have are of the amazing summer thunderstorms..

I don't think the fact that there was a 9 year old in 1994 is going to give much away. Its hardly unique!

Mid twenties - out for post work drinks with my girls and then off to our favourite live music bar until the early hours. Goodness knows how much cider we drank.

In three months time I met my husband at that fabulous bar.

Now he and I sit at home on a Friday night and stress about our three DC. Cider has been replaced with red wine.

Happy times then, now too (but the hangovers are worse and I am nowhere near as smartly dressed)

Pre drinks at friends house- Voddy and Diet Coke, pub, then free party bus to club. Long walk home after closing having spent all my money drinking.
Alcopops were in but couldn’t stomach the Woodys or MD20/20after to many big nights out on them.

I'm 18 and after dinner at home and a lengthy tart up session I'll be heading into town, either to see a local band whose lead singer I have a massive crush on, or clubbing at the end of the Pier.

I'll be wearing a fitted t-shirt, a-line mini with opaques and knee high boots and a liberal squoosh of Sunflowers perfume.

If I'm clubbing my mates and I will have handbags just big enough to squeeze in a couple of bottles of Mad Dog 20/20. It's Ladies Night so free entry and first drink and all drinks £1.50 until midnight for girls anyway. We'll be on Malibu and pineapple, vodka and cranberry and white lightening.

Lights go up at 2am as they play 'Right Here' by SWV and we'll all walk barefoot back along the Pier to find a taxi.

I would have been 15, working "off payroll" after school at my dads friends garage in deepest rural Worcestershire, which I'd done since age 12 or 13 by then all on my own.

I'd probably be welding some old banger up for a customer, likely a Marina/Ital, Metro or Mini (or any other piece of Leyland tat) whilst keeping one ear for the forecourt bell if a petrol customer came in - attended service, just two very old pumps 4 star petrol and diesel

Actually by now I'd have locked up and walked home as we shut at 10.00.

29 and going to Whirl-Y-Gig with DP and seeing bands like Dreadzone, Banco de Gaia, Transglobal Underground. Smoking far too much weed.
Now, don't smoke any more. Just got in from a restaurant having dropped friend home on the way back. DP (same one) stayed in, fed cats and pottered about the house. He's now a pensioner!!!! Where have the years gone?

I dunno exactly, ID theft or identifying MN users maybe. Obvs only possible with other details but many of us put all sorts of info on here that could be pieced together if someone wanted to do that.

Ooh - I was a student living in Spain for a year of my degree. Having the time of my life. Fridays we would eat at our flat, friends would come round then we would go out. Often to a tiny indie bar a 10 - 25 minute walk away. It was an amazing time.

As it’s a Friday night I would be at my bar job in a nightclub serving pints of Blastaway and glasses of Lambrusco. I was 19 at the time, second year of uni and had been with DP (now DH) for a year.

Randomly, someone has just shared the bar prices from where I worked which would have been 1994-5ish. I remember I earned £4 per hour and that was because our uniform was cut off shorts and a crop top.

I'm 15, wearing jeans - probably with a ribbed top with an open checked shirt. I'm probably in the house of one of the four school friends I spend a lot of Friday evenings with. We are a happy gang of 5 (3 girls, 2 boys). We chat, laugh, listen to lots of 90s music. Stay up very late. We haven't had alcohol yet, we'll try that in a few months. Our suburb is safe but the two boys will walk me and the other girls home later as they always do. Those walks through the still, quiet, moonlit suburb are magical - we'll dance down the middle of roads while everyone is sleeping. It feels like our own special world.

Now I'm mid 40s, living hundreds of miles away from that suburb. A place that was once my world but where my family no longer live. I still have and listen to my 90s CD collection. I am still great friends with one of the girls and one of the boys from my 90s friendship group. One of them got married last year and as we danced we were back in the 90s.

1994 I was at Brighton uni 1st year, one of my favourite ever years !!

Imagine being able to get a mortgage with a record shop job, in your early 20s.
How times have changed :(

I would’ve been cycling to the chip shop that did pizza slices and chips and spend my paper round money. Rest of the night cycling with my friends.

tonight I’m late 40s, sat in the garden and had a gin and tonic. Adult daughters ( older than I was in 1994) one had been out and the other a quiet night in

Orchestra here, picked up by my dad at 9.30 then home - maybe a bottle of Old Jamaica ginger beer and a packet of rolos from Threshers before bed. Probably too late for have I got news for you but may have watched some TV. Not old enough for going out drinking yet (or enough friends, to be fair...).

I’d most likely have been drinking cider or lambrusco somewhere with my mates or watching a sixth form band playing a gig somewhere. I’d be 15 and in year 10.
If I wasn’t doing the above i’d be at my best friends house (where i’d be almost every weekend) watching films late to the early hours. Mel Gibson, Kevin Costner, Christian Slater or the Brat Pack - happy days.

I was about a month old, probably keeping my mum awake as she often likes to remind me I did not like going to sleep 😂

now I’m 32 and will go to sleep any opportunity I get 😂😂

it was my first year at Oxford. It being May Day, I’d have started the morning watching people jump off Magdalen Bridge, and then stopped at The Alternative Tuckshop on the way home to grab a bacon sandwich. I’d then have to have done some revision for Prelims with plentiful breaks when friends popped round to my room for a cup of tea. These would be punctuated by other breaks when I wandered off to other friends’ rooms for a change of scene to drink tea when I got bored.

Then at this time of night, we would been rewarding ourselves for our good work by dancing to indie music at Club Latinos (£1 tequila shots in those days!).

Being a student in your late teens in the mid-90s was amazing. The world seemed so optimistic back then.

I had 3 kids by then. Not everyone on MN was born in the 80s.