I have a girlfriend, but I don’t have a house. We watch DIY programmes on TV together. Sometimes she sulks and I pretend not to notice. I go to weddings about every six months. When my girlfriend asks about them I start to feel uncomfortable and try to change the subject.

I don’t see my friends much any more. We have to plan our meetings by e-mail, weeks in advance. When we meet we talk about how long it is since we left university. Sometimes we have e-mail arguments, but most of the time we just send each other jokes. When I meet people from my old school they look kind of tired. They probably all earn more money than me. Maybe I should become an accountant or a lawyer or something. Maybe it’s too late.

Sometimes I get the urge to buy videos of all the cartoons I used to love as a child. I feel unbearably sad when I watch Tom Hanks in Big on sunless Sunday afternoons. I don’t really know what I want. I just have a vision of myself on a boat on a calm, blue sea, quietly fishing and drinking beer.
LEON DAVEY

It’s 1am at a bus station in Oxfordshire. It’s freezing cold and the ultra-cheap bus I booked on the internet left a quarter of an hour ago. My dad pulls up and, at the age of 24, I load my rucksack into the back and get in. Again. In the car on the way home, he interrogates me. I used to have a “real” job, one that made me miserable and was an attempt to have a conventional career after years of studying. I jacked it in to run off to the Edinburgh Festival this year and put on a play. I got rid of my house in London at the same time, and due to Edinburgh’s effects on my finances, I am reduced to kipping at my increasingly reluctant friends’ houses and going back to my parents’ so that I can eat properly.

This isn’t unusual: half my friends seem to be locked into endless work experience or working long hours for peanuts in jobs they love. Of course my parents don’t understand: at my age, my father was married and two years into a stable career at this age. I still can’t believe I’m meant to be an adult.
SARAH DRINKWATER

Twenties means options. These options have now turned into the bane of my life. In the blue corner is the fast-paced career woman with the car, pathetically small studio flat at a costly price, an ever-growing CD collection and the gym membership that is never used. It is essential to holiday with “the girls” at least once a year, deny yourself a loving relationship with a member of the opposite sex — only casual flings need apply — and binge-drinking, smoking (only socially, of course) and being one of the lads with a mouth resembling a sewer is crucial.

So, what awaits me in the red corner? I want the dark, handsome stranger to whisk me off my feet and shower me with adoration and love — he must be accompanied by a rather generous pay packet and a career to match — a doctor, lawyer, City banker maybe? Picnics, theatre, countryside strolls and nights in by the fire with only the one glass of wine would be paradise. Oh, and did I mention that I would happily lose my independence in order to look after the 2.4 children that are coming my way any day now?
NATALIE DAVIES

Being 20 years old means sitting in a cold office watching rain gathering in great pools on the bowling green whose upkeep is your responsibility. It means reading the newspapers over and over in an attempt to pass the time as the rain continues to fall from the sky and nobody even comes to play tennis. It means looking through the Jobs sections of every newspaper and internet site you can find and learning to scan not for the salary or even the type of job, but whether experience is essential or merely highly desired.

It means wishing every day that you had been more sensible at university, and hating yourself for stacking up the debt that now prevents you from leaving home properly. It means being stranded in rural Northern Ireland when all that you want to do is go to a pub with all of your newly old university acquaintances.

It means withering as your driving instructor upbraids you once again for making a total mess of a gear change. It means that you wonder

if you’ll ever speak to an interesting woman again, let alone anything more. It means feeling sorry for yourself. It means turning 21 tomorrow.
THOMAS ROBINSON

I grew up with Oasis, the YBAs, decent footballers, sushi and all my friends being allowed to go to university. I don’t remember much about recessions, Conservatives, perms, strikes and bad music. Being twentysomething in England is just better now. People of my generation have a lower fear of failure; society has become more tolerant of their dreaming. Men and women seem to talk to each other more than they used to. We are getting better at platonic relationships. It doesn ’t even rain as often these days. The weather is warmer.

Twenty-somethings don’t have to rush out and get high-powered careers anymore. Everyone is in less of a rush. Travelling is actively encouraged while unusual occupations (tortoise walkers, stunt man, that kind of thing) are coveted, cool and endorsed.

Most twenties practice a unique contemporary nostalgia where we watch Button Moon DVDs on plasma televisions (boys) and pay couture prices for second-hand clothes in trendy boutiques (girls).

We are mostly cynical in public but secretly romantic at heart. We have no money, but loads of stuff. My peers live perpetually in the present without apology, savings or a pension plan. We may be the first generation to be ruined by consumerism.

There is one drawback to being this age now, though. Despite earning more than both our parents put together, none of us can afford to buy the houses we live in.
IAN LOMAS