suddenly doesn't seem very impressive anymore...

Mainly this...
Thunderdome Manchester...all nighters...was great at the time, can't think of anything worse now.

I was in my second year at Leeds College Of Music, the Stevie Wonder track reminds me of "The Gallery"; a funk and soul nightspot we used to frequent every Wednesday night. Happy Days, bad dancing and a pint of Teltey's for under £2!

But you'd better pray The Captain ain't around 'cos you just know he'll instigate a caption competition...

removal industry, drinking too much and meeting girls. Now I work in the relocation industry, don't drink enough and avoid meeting girls. I think Stevie wins, just.

I was at sea on a fuck off, great big grey warship.

( sleek grey messenger of doom)

with those dirty punk bands and new wavers, like The Ramones, The Clash & Talking Heads. Basically having a bloody great time and being paid for it. 1977 *sighs*

...in Middlesbrough, finishing up a Business Studies degree. Oh, the glamour.

and wondering how I could continue to avoid adult responsibilities.So far so good.

I'm 22 now but I won't be for long...

I think I was about 16 when I first heard that, and 22 seemed impossibly ancient to me.
Jesus, where does the time go?

new ways to expand my mind, expand my waistline and narrow my horizons. Don't regret a moment. All turned out OK...

I'll let you know when I get there. 1 year, 11 months left, or something.

providing the funk that powered, er, Kentish Town's dancing feet.
I was living at my girlfriend's place in Primrose Hill (London). It was an office romance but we were trying to keep it from our work colleagues. The landlady lived upstairs and was friends with one of the bosses, so there was a fair bit of subterfuge involved.

At 22, my main spot was lovedoves

Richmond Surrey. Great days earning about £6K per year and spending about 90% of it on beer and records

smoking too much dope, pontificating to anyone who would listen about the unfairness of it all.

I wasn't very nice at 22.

sitting on the north German plain waiting for the cold war to heat up.

Living in a hellhole and totally skint.

But I was happy. Sort of.

working in a warehouse by day "rocking out" at night. Bass player for Feast of Friends, first single released on good old 7" picture sleeved vinyl. Out of Step fanzine and cassette label CEO, all D.I.Y'ed from said warehouse's back office. All pre-internet (almost pre-electricity!) so I doubt there are any embarrasing photos floating around cyber-space...

At 22, I was sitting in an office, dreaming of better things and wasting too much time posting on a forum known as "The Word Magazine". Imagine!

Now, however... oh...

http://www.myspace.com/dandareuk

It only seems like 19-and-a-half years ago... Happy days.

Working in the Virgin Megastore Oxford Street, listening to Saint Etienne's Foxbase Alpha one too many times, staying out all night dancing and doing things to people I shouldn't have and getting punched in the face for it. One too many times to make it worth it.

Did play a gig at the old Pied Bull at the Angel, which became the Roundhaus I think and is now an All Bar One. The gig was excellent, including knickers thrown in my direction from some lovely lady friends of mine, and Geno Washington was in the audience. He told me it was excellent and I was able to tell him that he was actually the first ever gig I went to. Which was nice.

None of it's Stevie Wonder though is it? Or even Paul Weller doing Going Underground. And lets not talk about Roddy Frame.

The landlords, who lived in the flat next door, were two brothers from Salford whose relationship made that of Noel and Liam look optimally streamlined. All I can remember of the place - apart from the permanent smell of Vesta Beef Curry - is that the toilet paper in the "communal bathroom facilities" consisted of ripped-up pages of Knave and Fiesta on a string. The toilet overflowed and flooded once, with the result that I woke up that morning to find that Luscious Linda Lusardi's sodden left tit had floated under my door on a patina of sludge.

The other basement tenant was a personable lad - also from Manchester, oddly enough (it was a right magnet for us Mancs, that house was). As we celebrated my arrival by cracking open a meet-and-greet can of Pissenmeister Bock (Budgen, 18p), he casually mentioned that his father was residing at Her Majesty's pleasure.

"Oh, really?" I asked perkily. "What's he in for?"

"He murdered me mam."

Ah, such wonderful, wonderful times.

playing in a band here in Ireland. We managed to make it onto tv, and on one of the programmes Pat Kenny told the nation that we were 'going to be the next U2'! It went downhill rapidly after that!!

Jimmy Page wrote this when he was 22

(He didn't, of course; he was 26, but Robert Plant wrote the lyrics at age 22 - and it shows :-))

Starting as a management trainee in a dullish job which I'm still in. It has its moments but I wish I'd done something more interesting back then. (...jumps to Career Change thread...)

At 22 I was in my final year at Humberside Uni doing a Business Studies degree; I fell in love for the first time (and split in the same year, something which I never emotionally recovered from for the rest of my 20's); I struggled to find a job in Hull - so ended up coming home to Hartlepool to help out in my fathers business to cover for someone on maternity leave (She never came back and I never left).

When I look back at the age of 35 on the 22 year-old me, I realise I failed to live up to my potential. At the time, I enjoyed it and never really thought of the future.

Armed only with Heart of Darkness and A Bend in the River I was 'finding myself' up the Congo.

I never did locate my spiritual self there - turns out it was in a small town in Sussex after all. Worth a try, though

I was living in Seoul, South Korea and had just got married. We're still together 32 years on AND she's still gorgeous!

Properly happy days. I was playing drums in a band called Skuravi in Peterborough, embarking on a career as a graphic designer and riding the crest of the wave of so-called grunge into the 'phenomenon' that was Britpop (© Andrew Harrison). Shared a house with our guitarist Andy, sitting up all night with him telling me all about The Smiths (who I had ignored til then) and spending quite a lot of time in my local, on a Monday night, drinking Samuel Smith's Old Brewery at £1.27 a pint (cheap even for then).

Now? A fully fledged graphic designer, living in London with my wife and our two-year-old. Still listen to Pearl Jam now and then, not so much 'Britpop', and still feel like I'm 22 most of the time. I will definitely grow up one day.

My early twenties are a bit of a blur, but in a good way!
I had a really boring job that I hated, but at the time I had a bunch of equally bored friends and together we did our best to cram in as much fun as possible between friday afternoon and monday morning...
I have lots of priceless memories from those days, but I couldn't put them in order if my life depended on it.
And then...people got in serious relationships, got pregnant, moved cities, changed careers, died, fell out, drifted apart, got stuck in front of the television, got new friends to match their new situations. So we don't see eachother anymore, and only occasionally speak on the phone to catch up ( less and less frequently with each passing year ).
But looking back, those years were really good.
Not Stevie Wonder funkproviding kind of good, but hey; somebody has to dance to the music as well!

then keeping my old summer job as a cleaner in a Battersea hostel for the various London Art Schools.

For some reason, the parents didn't appreciate my career choice.

Let's see, shortly after my 22nd birthday in 1977 I started work in the sorting room at the main GPO in Exeter. I took my mate's portable cassette player in to alleviate the boredom, and nearly got lynched by my tabloid reading comrades for playing Never Mind The Bollocks, which was, of course, the product of the work-shy, unpatriotic, foul-mouthed, scruffy, drug-addled ne'er-do-wells called the "Sex Pistols" (inverted commas copyright Express Newspapers). Most of these same comrades promptly voted for Thatch two years later, precipitating their own plunge into an economic vortex of doom, which was some form of cruel, distorted justice. Meanwhile, after Christmas, I returned to finishing my gentleman's degree studies.

Manchester, drinking beer, making friends and chatting up girlies. And eating kebabs.

Oh. And some learning about all teeth and stuff.

In something called Computer Output Microfilm. This was in the days before everyone had a computer on their desks and companies would send computer tapes of their invoices, inventory or whatever which we would put onto microfiche that they could distribute. At the time, I couldn't wait to stop shift work but I have often regretted my decision the next year to get out of it. Although I sometimes had to work nights, the amount of days I got off in compensation would be really handy now.

I think that was the year of the big ANL/Rock Against Racism gigs. There was one in Brockwell Park and one in Victoris Park. Elvis Costello topped one bill and Tom Robinson another. I think the Clash were involved as well. Good times.

and I'd just finished my studies in Dublin but sure as hell wasn't ready to settle down in a job for the rest of my life. So I meet and like a German exchange girl and move over to her. Germany was rich-ish and inward-looking and very appreciative of people making an effort with their cumbersome language. This was also the Summer of RAF terrorism.

33 years later, I'm still here (not still with her but we produced a terrific daughter). Then a second wife and another daughter (marriage on the rocks) but life is okay here. The country is more open and liberal than any other I know (bar the bureaucracy). Ireland is more reachable than ever, thanks to cheap flights, but I do sometimes ponder what have been if I'd stayed. The girls compensate for everything though.

Oh, I train English and other stuff and continue to enjoy my work and improve as a person. Think it's fair to say I'm an admired foreigner.

I was living in Sheffield, working as a radio presenter, having a whale of a time. I adored my job, I had some wonderful friends, things were pretty perfect.

I was young, I was confident, I was lucky.

I'm not usually one for regrets, but I do wish I could skip back in time and be 22 again. Particularly knowing what I know now, 13 years later!

Not a good time to visit Germany, then. Although I must admit I thought that all finished in 1945 shortly after Dresden got flattened.

First year at polly, gorging myself on punk/new wave gigs in absurd surroundings, being a disco bunny at the Ad Lib in the Lace Market. Learning, by bitter experience, to smoke then drink not drink then smoke. Bliss was it in that dorm etc.

first staff nurse post. Harrowden A ward Kettering General Hospital....happy days.

Well, of course it was champagne and caviar for breakfast every day, after bathing in asses milk and honey to revive my tired complexion after all the late nights. There was nothing but bouquets of red roses as far as the eye could see... My pliés were the envy of Paris, my arabesques drove the audience wild. Everywhere I went little girls would beg for my autograph, and their fathers would plead for just a moment of my time.

When Madame Petrovsky told me the sheikh had asked for a private performance, I thought little of it. I’d danced for all kinds of royalty in all kinds of places, and I wasn’t averse to “giving my all” performance-wise, if you know what I mean. After all, a girl needs a little something to fall back on, and all those lovely diamonds they kept sending were going to come in very handy when my dancing days were over. So, when he asked me to join him for a little supper so I could show him the difference between second and third position I was more than happy to oblige. Imagine my surprise when I woke up not in the Presidential Suite of the Hotel George V but tied up and on the back of a camel in some godforsaken desert. Well, if you’ve ever been kidnapped and sold into the white slave trade you’ll know exactly how I felt. How stupid – there was I, too polite to mention the wine tasted corked when it had been poisoned all along...

Anyway, to cut a long story short, obviously I escaped. I, um, don’t like to talk about the details too much even now, but suffice to say I never danced again. I still speak surprisingly good Cantonese after all these years though.

Bootle beat for the most part, extra tenner a week training allowance on top of me dole - we were know as ETs. The People page on a Thursday and Friday - weddings, funerals, people of special achievement and an assorted collection of well meaning and non-threatening cranks.
The enticement of free dinner at Sefton Council meetings (three courses and cheese board) at Bootle Town Hall meant I got to know a lot about local government, very quickly.
I don't think I enjoyed any other echelon of journalism more, if I am being truthful.

Split between three romantic cities. Paris, where I worked as an English teacher. Bradford, where I was studying for my modern languages degree and where the Yorkshire Ripper was wreaking havoc. And finally, most glamorous of all, my home town of Stoke, where I went as often as possible to see the fabulous Stoke City. Chelsea finished twelfth in the second division in 80-81. Just where they belong.

Mostly spent training as a chartered accountant in the city of London and working/studying like a slave.two weeks before my 23rd birthday I was diagnosed with testicular cancer then life got really grim for a number of years.

When I turned 22, I was playing guitar and singing in the mighty* Idiot Bear, living in a house in Durham and working at the now defunct Stait Photo in the Prince Bishops shopping centre. The occasion of my 22nd birthday saw me drinking absinthe at an enormous house party (tiny house, enormous party). We had mates DJing, and a level of actual partying down which would make me wince if it was happening at the other end of my street today. Seems I've changed.

Anyway, that was a fun year. Hopelessly poor (but rent was only £30 a week), constantly schlepping down to Warwick to visit my now-GLW, playing gigs in Newcastle and Sunderland and 'Boro, then over the Pennines in Lancaster and Barrow, getting signed (to miniscule indies), still smoking like a chimney. Such different times.

In the September of 2000 I moved to London, took a HORRIBLE job as a recruitment "consultant" and spent 9 months of misery before being happily made redundant the day after getting back from my honeymoon.

Stevie wins, but I'm not complaining.

*Disclaimer: may not actually have been mighty.