In the latest in a series of blogs from the Informed Choice team, Martin recounts his tale of 1994, the year in which Informed Choice started.
As I often struggle to remember what I ate for breakfast, thinking back 20 years to 1994 is something of a challenge.
I reached my 15th birthday that summer, a milestone marked by the (legal) option to watch a much wider range of movies.
The 15 Certificate back then opened up this young movie watcher to see more new films than it probably would do today.
A particular favourite was True Lies; a movie my best friend Ian watched at the cinema more times than I could count, and I joined him for a couple of those. Speed was another favourite.
I was anything but sporty back in those days, although my friends and I would often spend the weekend out mountain biking, usually in the Surrey Hills or exploring the countryside around Cranleigh.
It was that summer three of us completed an epic (at the time) bike ride from Cranleigh to the coast and back. Even back then, 60 miles of cycling felt like a long way.
These were of course the days before the Internet (at least nothing we would recognise today, all newsgroups and download speeds measured in minutes not micro-seconds) or mobile phones for teenagers.
My social life had to be organised by actually talking to other humans, something replaced by Facebook, Twitter and text messages in subsequent years.
When not hanging out with friends in the evenings after school, I would be listening to the Evening Session with Steve Lamacq and Jo Whiley on Radio 1 in my bedroom.
This was my introduction to bands such as Terrorvision, Portishead and Green Day, which remain on my playlists to this very day.
I certainly had no aspirations to become a Financial Planner back then; in fact, my career choice was about as unclear as my academic potential, with my mock GCSE results failing to provide any clarity other than the hope I might progress to sixth form college the following summer.
