benjamin Judge

So… the plan is…

I want to write about the last fifty years but, as I was born in July (and not January), I it will be easier to do the fifty-one years (1976 -2026) which, as we start this project, are the ones I have been alive in.

I have split each year into ten sections:

• Introduction (I introduce the year)
• Place (I talk about a place significant to me that will, ideally, be linked to the year in some way)
• Event (I pick an event that happened in the year that was significant to my life, or the world, or both, largely guided by what seems interesting)
• Song (I pick a song from that year and explain why it has an important place in my life. Warning: not all these songs will be good)
• Object (I write about something I own and link it to the year in a fascinating and probably really classy way)
• Food (I talk about a food that connects to the year or that I ate in the year and honestly, of all the categories, this is the most likely to go rogue, sorry)
• TV⁺ (I mostly talk about television, but that little ⁺ gives me excuse enough to talk about computer games and the like.)
• Album (I pick my favourite album of the year)
• Book (I pick my favourite book of the year)
• Film (I pick my favourite film of the year)

If I write one section a week (say, on a Tuesday) I will finish the project (by telling you what my favourite film of 2026 was) on the 6th of May, 2036. The odds of me, WordPress, democracy and the climate lasting until then are, I reckon, about fifty-fifty, but I’m going to give it a go anyway.

And here’s the interesting bit. Any book (or film or album or song or television show or computer game or food etc) I write about I am going to reread (or rewatch, or listen to again, or play again, or eat again etc). No nostalgia here. If it turns out that the things I thought were cool when I was twenty-three are, you know, not good, then we will face those facts together. I want this site to be an intellectual exploration of what it has meant to be alive during the last half a decade.

Then, on Fridays, I’ll just post any old shit.