As of today, it's 20 years since I set foot in Derby, the East Midlands town where I live. On the afternoon of 13th April 1989, I drove into town in my Talbot Sunbeam and parked it at the Friary Hotel, where the nuclear research and design company Rolls-Royce and Associates had booked a room for me, and about ten other hopeful undergraduates. I was due to attend a second interview at their premises the following day.

I checked in, put my things in my room, and walked along Friargate, into the so-called city centre, to see what it was like. I remember walking into the Eagle Centre - then Derby's main shopping mall - and feeling slightly disappointed by the nondescript mundanity of it all. Derby has changed a lot over the last 20 years, and especially in the last three or four, but on the whole it's recognisably the same place, and above all it retains at its core that same trademark banality.

I remember being nervous. I knew that I was expected to talk about myself for a few minutes in front of the rest of the attendees at a "group interview", which I found quite a daunting prospect at the time. I remember making notes about my degree course when I returned to my room, intending to talk about that when the time came.

I recall little else about the time I spent in that hotel other than that I watched the old sci-fi thriller This Island Earth on the TV in my room. I haven't watched it since, but I'll be indulging in a special 20th anniversary commemorative viewing this evening.

A small fleet of cars came and picked us up from the hotel reception the following morning and conveyed us to the company premises on Raynesway. The interview went very well, for me anyway, and they offered me a position as an Analyst/Programmer, conditional upon my gaining a 2:2 or higher when I graduated that summer. I got a 2:1, and took it.

And I worked there for five years, from August that year until August 1994. I commuted from Leicester at first, where I lived with my girlfriend back then, Sara. I eventually moved to Derby at the very end of 1990, and bought my house in April 1991. And apart from a seven-year chunk spent in London, I've been here ever since.

The Friary, pictured above today, was a charming if unassuming traditional hotel in 1989. It's a slightly awful bar now. I went back there this afternoon, and recreated my inaugural walk into the town centre.

It's remarkable really that I should have spent all this time in Derby. I don't particularly like the place, I have no family connections here, no friends here, and apart from a few months I'd rather not think about in 2005, I haven't worked in Derby since 1994. I think it's called inertia.