Oh dear. We’re once again approaching that time when everybody feels compelled to summarize the last year, or to play at being a garden-variety Nostradamus. As in last years, I might just do a prophylactic ‘Mark all as read’, and leave it at that.

This year, I fear this will be worse than ever: We’re changing decade. This means we (or the media) will need new vocabulary. What will we call 2000-2009 ? It’s easy for decades 20 to 90, but for 0 …

It’s fairly moronic to view a decade as a block – almost as moronic as the whole ‘generation’ business – time, and reproduction, is continuous after all. Yet for the sake of simplicity we throw together disco and the vietnam war and call it the seventies. But hey, we love simplification, it allows us to feel wise and in control.

Time to choose a name, then. Remember, this is a label we’ll hear for the next fifty years (after which i probably won’t care), or until mandarin or hindi overtake english. Candidates so far:

• the oughts
• the oughties (variant of the above with obligatory -ies to fit in with what came before)
• the noughties: bad pun alert
• the 2000s: too millenial, fits 2123 just as well and lacks pizazz too.
• the resets ? ‘the start of the century’ ? …

What’s your vote ? Other options ? We can take bets on it and see what comes out on top.

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