Being 18

It was 1998, I had a 5 month old baby and was desperate to get back to my A Levels.

I was 18 in 1999. I was in Sixth Form at High School and had a huge gang of friends. There was an 18th birthday party every Friday night at one of the many social clubs in our town and the entire upper sixth was invited. My best friend and I became friends that year as her best mate at the time got a boyfriend and dumped her. We used to go into Newcastle on a Monday and Thursday night with her brother and his friends (one of whom was Mr Bumbleebee) and they used to take us to all the 'cool' clubs. We used to spend Tuesdays and Fridays lounging on the chairs in the sixth form block drinking hot chocolate from the vending machine trying get rid of our hangovers. My best mate lived right next to school so we used to go back to hers at lunchtime, drink a load of cider and then go back to school. We snogged loads of boys and wore lots of lycra tops with black trousers as a going out outfit. Happy days.

How could I forget mirrored bags? I lived in Notts then too so we used to go to Ice Nine and another shop who's name I can't remember despite it being the coolest shop ever.

I used to wear leggings with my DMs and I was skinny then despite eating 3 bars of choc most days.

Why were we all pretentious idiots at 18?

It was 1998 I was engaged to my now OH.(We'd been engaged 2 years already).

I was a size 12 and actually had a waist.

I was half way through the career training on my dreams and loving college life.

I was living at home with my parents and loving my life.

Although I didnt enjoy being told my relationship with OH "wouldn't last" or that we were "too young" to know and even think about marriage.

<I didnt drink or go out drinking>

waah! ice nine was my total favourite shop - and tsunami which was down the road and had the best joss sticks ever

is was 18 in 1989 - was just about to do my a levels - got them finished and had a fantastic summer of goth nights at rock city, flopping around in graveyards drinking thunderbird, snogging lots of boys and all day/all night 18th birthday parties

i worked in a garage on the fosse way and waitressing to fund my cheap booze, black eyeliner, thick tights, short skirts and dms

i spent most of my 18th year in the first year of uni - it was a strange time - i did some great things and some really, really stupid things

I turned 18 in the summer of 1990. I had finished school and was about to start Uni.

I was a complete grunge kid, and as soon as I was out of school I pierced my face and ears to bits - I had two hoops through my nose, a stud through my labrette and another hoop through my bottom lip. I dreaded my hair and wore loads of eyeliner and mascara. I owned one pair of extremely beaten up Doc Martens and I wore all my Mum's old skirts and dresses from the 60s and 70s, accessorised with leggings and thick tights.

I spent a lot of time hanging out in an old bus trying to be a hippy, but secretly wanting to eat some decent food and be warm, rather than live on meals of lentils twice a day and have only a blanket and a woodburner for warmth.

I started Uni and hated it and rebelled like crazy against anything and everything. Especially road building - which got me arrested a few times.

I then broke my leg and spent the rest of my 18th year in hospital. Which was rather boring...

II haven't had time to read all of this. I was 18 in 1992. I also loved Neds and PWEI.Went to their reunion gig a couple of years ago. Big Mac fries to go!!!

18 wasn't the best age for me - I think I had more fun before and after. I was 18 in 1990, and had been going out with my boyfriend for two years (and thoroughly sick of him). I'd gone through the 'eighties glamour look, trying to emulate the Jennifer Rush haircut, and the goth period, and was now wandering around in long skirts and sandals thinking I was in Fleetwood Mac. Within a year, I was full-on rock chick with leggings, boots and waistcoat, but I wasn't there yet ?.

I spent my time in the local pubs (I hadn't yet found the road out of my small provincial town) or listening to Don McLean and smoking dope, before lying out on grass verges all night looking at the stars and talking arse.

I had an English A level exam on my eighteenth, after which I went to the grimmest pub in town, watched a World Cup game, got thoroughly drunk and went to my boyfriend's, where I laughed at all the presents he and his family had bought me (including a speshul Tomos moped). I wasn't very popular ?

Bloody hell, everyone was having a better time than i was at 18!

i was 18 in 2000. i lived in halls at uni, which were originally for vicars in training (ordinands?). I had a tidy little cell-like bedroom with a blue monsoon throw over the bed, i was a size 8 [:'(] and i wore figure-hugging but not slutty long black dresses. i listened to bach and stared out of windows, did all my homework, loved philology and got a first at the end of the year in every module (only time that happened!). i went to chapel and was generally a massive but very conservative goth. i argued with some floppy-haired nhs-specs-and-leather-jacket public schoolboy at a music appreciation club, and fell out with him (married him later), i was obsessed with a bonkers organist doing astrophysics who at the time looked a bit like the young tom riddle in HP2. we went out once, he was gay, and i moped. i hung around with a premed girl who read children's books about a boarding school where everyone loved horses, and we stayed in and worked.

now, ask me about when i was 19 ? i had more fun then!

Hm, this'll date me. I turned 18 a couple of weeks after Live Aid. ? I'd just returned from a week in Tenby with some school friends to celebrate finishing our A levels. I was working all that summer in the Wedgwood dept of Bentalls in Bracknell, saving and getting ready to go to university in Aberdeen.

I remember that year being full of new friends, independence, a dreadful mullet hairdo, pixie boots in a variety of colours and a lot of cider. Days were spent lounging in the Central Refectory between classes, or shopping on Union Street which usually culminated in a hot chocolate at Charles Michie or a ratatouille pancake at The Pancake Place. There was also an Indian restaurant at the town end of King's Street which did a business lunch (2 courses for a fiver). I loved their pakora. ?

Evenings were spent studying in the bar at the halls of residence.. Or in the kitchen in our flat, plotting mischief like putting fluorescent dye in the fountain in Seaton Park. Or down at Henry J Bean's for happy hour for half price cocktails and a plate of their loaded potato skins (which were dead exotic back then, I'll have you know ?), then onto Ma Cameron's or (probably and) the Tappit Hen. On Fridays it was down the Student Union for a swift half in the Dungeon Bar then up to the top floor to dance the night away with the goths. Ah, happy days.

I was 18 in 2001. I wore far too much black eyeliner and lived in goth-style tops with baggy or flared jeans and biker boots. I went to far more gigs and clubs than can possibly have been good for my hearing and rarely remembered getting home. I fucked up my A levels and was completely off my face on almost any drug I could get my hands on and I didn't care. I didn't eat, had lots of sex (most of which I don't remember) and had inverted sleeping patterns.

At 19 I was even worse, by 21 I realised I should probably grow up a bit - became a manager, got married, and the people that knew me back then still can't quite believe the transformation. But there is still a hedonist in me... ?

The Year - 1993 - My Gap year spent largely dossing.

The Scene - Dance music scene in London. Lots of repetitive beats, dawn bedtimes and going to big clubs and raves where people wore neon and blew on whistles!! Loved places like Megatripolis, The Sanctuary, Illegal parties in massive barns or fields... or disused supermarkets in Brighton.

The Music - Prodigy, and Djs like Carl Cox, Stalker, Mickey Finn... can't remember others!

The Drink - Water. iyswim

The Clothes / figure - Felt fat, but looking back i wasn't fat at all and would love to be like that again. I wore hippy ravy stuff. Lots of birght colours and DM boots (not Filas!)

The Boyfirend - He's recently got back in touch thanks to facebook. Love of my life at the time - I cheated on him and broke his heart.

Would i go back to being 18 again? Not on your nellie.

18... blimey. I was enjoying myself! Drinking the standard 20/20, Thunderbird (YUK!) and Bastaways! ?