A lot of my time at secondary school was spent with the same 24 other boys, because my school believed on keeping form groups together for the full five years. Only one new boy joined the class during that time, and nobody moved or left, so we swiftly became a cohesive whole.
We were all 11 when we started, and most of us 16 when we left, so we all had very similar influences. We'd all lived through the three day week and power cuts, and just experienced the long hot summer of 1976. During our time together we witnessed the Winter of Discontent and the rise of Thatcherism, and grew up in the shadow of unemployment and nuclear war. We shared the same crazes, endured the same school lunches and bitched about the same teachers. We'd come into school on Fridays and discuss who'd been on Top of the Pops as if it were important, and never ever communicated with each over the weekend. Family backgrounds aside, we all had every chance of turning out the same.
But it turns out we were in fact two very different groups, even though I didn't realise it at the time. It's only now with the benefit of hindsight I can see that some of my classmates had everything going for them and the rest of us would have to make do as best we could. Because although most of us were born in 1965 which made us Gen X, the rest were born in 1964 which made them Boomers.
The Baby Boomer generation is generally accepted to be those born between 1946 and 1964. The end of World War Two caused a significant increase in population as couples made a personal investment in the future, and their children grew up with increasingly prosperous opportunities. That potential was coming to an end in 1964 when some of my classmates arrived on the scene, and then on the stroke of midnight on New Year's Eve everything suddenly changed.
My friend Mark was born just three weeks into 1965 so I always got on well with him. But Kevin was a December 1964 baby which I'm sure explains why we rarely meshed. As a boomer he'll have aspired to status, money, and social climbing, which are very different core attitudes to me, so I bet he's doing a lot better out of life with a bigger house and a larger pension pot.
Russell was always a genial member of the class, which I'm sure results from being a Gen X baby. But Paul was always more success-focused and stand-offish because he was a Boomer, which means he'll have taken prosperity for granted. We lived close by but never thought of visiting each other's houses, which'll be because he was competitive and mission-oriented whereas I'm more someone who just quietly does his own thing.
Patrick epitomised the balanced, active and happy mindset of a 1965 baby. But Martin was much more greedy, materialistic and ambitious by dint of being a few months older, indeed it wouldn't surprise me if he ended up voting Conservative all his life. He was the one who used his premature facial hair to get into pubs before he should have done, but Boomers did always need recognition and rewards to keep them motivated to achieve more.
Andrew had a laid-back, tolerant character, as you'd expect from any Gen X classmate. But Graham had drive and an innate sense of self-importance, which is much more the viewpoint of someone who grew up at the end of a time of widespread government subsidy and full employment. It's all too easy to have hard-wired optimism when you're a Boomer, whereas us younger children only learned to take on board feelings of frustrated ambivalence.
Darren always seemed adaptable, informal and independent, because that's a July 1965 birthday for you. But Ian arrived in October 1964, so he was always going to evolve a distaste for snowflakery with a side order of entitlement. As a digital throwback he won't be one for internet banking, and I bet he was spoilt rotten by his parents, plus he'll be dead set on transferring all his wealth to his lucky kids, and it wouldn't surprise me if he's been divorced at least twice by now.
The generational divide cut invisibly across our classroom, making some of us ambitious competitive consumers and some of us ethical flexible pragmatists. It's all so obvious now, much more than it was at the time, because only with time can an oversimplistic definition of collective character take hold and imprint itself on our thinking. Those lucky bastard Boomers had it all, and undoubtedly still do, and all because everything changed on 1st January 1965.
If you started secondary school in 1957 your schoolmates will also have suffered from the generational divide, but this time it's the younger September-December 1945 births who got to avoid the Boomer tag whereas the younger cohort were as bad as all the rest. Likewise a 1992 secondary transfer means your class was split between Gen X and Millennials, perish the thought, and a 2008 start means a faultline between Millennials and Gen Z.
And OK, the real life generational divide isn't anywhere near as well defined as I've made out, and strict classifications are always bluntly oversimplistic tools, often dangerously so. But I only recognise this because I'm Gen X which makes me sceptical and cynical, and I bet if you're a loyal Boomer you lapped up every word.
The next Olympic Park neighbourhood to slip glacially into existence will be Bridgewater. It'll be a triangular offshoot of Pudding Mill, bounded on three sides by the Greenway, the railway and the City Mill River. During the Olympics it was used for conducting security checks, but since then has been mostly left as fenced-off hardstanding.
Essentially it's six wasted acres, the only bright spot being the allotments along the northern edge.
But plans for Bridgewater's 600 new homes have now been put forward, and allotment holders fear they no longer see quite such a bright future.
Manor Garden Allotments were quietly productive for a century until London won its Olympic bid. In 2007 the original site off Waterden Road was controversially fenced off and flattened to become part of the northern half of the Olympic Park, because promises that the land would be held "in perpetuity" were no match for a global planning onslaught. Two smaller replacement allotments were eventually provided, one off Marsh Lane in Waltham Forest (opened 2013) and the other here at Pudding Mill (opened 2016). It took a season or two to evolve from "a few sheds by the railway" to "lush horticultural vibe" but is now positively the latter. Plotholders worry it may not be for long.
The issues are building heights and lack of sunlight. The remainder of the Bridgewater triangle is to be crammed with housing in order to meet building targets, including six 11-storey apartment blocks. Four of these are planned to rise close to the allotment boundary - two to the southwest and two to the southeast - even though the LLDC once promised lower blocks instead. And once they're built the clear sightlines that plotholders currently enjoy will disappear, making direct sunlight an intermittent rather than permanent feature.
Which brings us to the thorny subject of "how much sunlight is enough sunlight"?
The map on the left comes from LLDC planning documents. In orange and red are all the areas which will receive less than 2 hours direct sunlight on 21st March after the new flats are built. Hardly any orange or red is evident, except in the shadow of sheds and up close to the site boundary. All the rest of the allotments, in green, will still receive more than two hours direct sunlight. This is fine, say the developers, two hours is all you need.
The map on the right comes from an independent study paid for by the allotment holders. This time the red area shows the area which will receive less than 8 hours direct sunlight on 21st March after the new flats are built. It covers about two thirds of the site. The rest of the allotments, in green, will still receive more than eight hours direct sunlight. This is not fine, say the allotment holders, this is "no sunshine" and "will severely restrict the areas that can cultivate vegetables".
So who's right?
The developers have based their figures on official BREguidance on overshadowing.
“It is suggested that, for it to appear adequately sunlit throughout the year, no more than two-fifths and preferably no more than a quarter of any garden or amenity area should be prevented by buildings from receiving any sun at all on 21 March. If, as a result of new development, an existing garden or amenity area does not meet these guidelines, and the area which can receive some sun on 21 March is less than 0.8 times its former value, then the loss of sunlight is likely to be noticeable.”
In this case all of the allotments will receive some sun on March 21st, indeed bar a few shed doors the entire site gets at least two hours. That'll be why the planning documents say "the Pudding Mill Allotments meet the BRE Guideline recommendation for amenity spaces with the proposal in place." This is exactly the kind of thing most planning applications say, not just this one. Fret not, your vegetables will still grow.
The allotment holders have instead picked 8 hours as their threshold, a rather tougher threshold to beat (especially when the spring equinox sees only 12 hours of daylight). At present the whole site easily exceeds eight hours, the only significantly shadowy local presence being a 135m tall skyscraper 200m away. A bunch of highrise flats around the perimeter would diminish that total somewhat, but it seems an exaggeration to describe less than 8 hours as "no sunshine".
I don't have a garden so I don't know what the appropriate sunshine threshold for vegetable cultivation should be. I do know that my north facing balcony gets no sun whatsoever on 21st March, and only a brief splash mid-afternoon during the summer, but that plants still grow. They seem to thrive on daylight rather than direct sunlight, as many plants do, but I'm not sure to what extent allotment-type growth relies on direct contact with the sun. However I assume that a substantial number of shadowy allotments exist across the country which fail to meet the 8hr+ criterion yet still manage to produce prize-winning veg.
The Pudding Mill Allotments won't be quite so pleasant once they're rubbing up against a building site and then a cluster of 38m-high flats. But to claim that "the LLDC's current plans may mean the end for our allotments" does seem somewhat of an overreaction. If you were planning on moving into one of Bridgewater's new apartments at the end of the decade, it might be wise to put your name down on the waiting list now.
