When I was seventeen, it was a very good year It was a very good year for music loving girls And late-punk new wave nights We'd pogo in the lights Near the village green When I was seventeen When I was twenty-one, it was a very good year It was a very good year for university girls Who lived up the stair With all their dark hennaed hair And it came undone When I was twenty-one When I was thirty-five, it was a very good year It was a very good year for wine-bar career girls Of independent means In tight pop-button jeans Into their mascaraed lives I’d dive When I was thirty-five But now the days are short, I'm in the autumn of my years And I think of my life as vintage wine From fine old kegs From the brim to the dregs It poured sweet and clear It was a very good year