The White Tower and Our Life at Watney

Beefeaters at the Tower


Heidi soon began her studies near Tottenham Court Road in central London, whilst Micah began the arduous task of finding employment. Our proximity to the Tower of London and its environs made his search, though unfruitful, at least more enjoyable at the outset. When the weather was fair the Tower was but a twenty-minute walk along the abandoned warfs of the Tobacco Dock.
While awaiting proper employment, he was temporarily given work at Watney street Market, selling towels for Yosef, an Iraqi-born Kurd who claimed to have had three British wives. Though such a situation provided no income, he was remunerated daily with a cup of milky tea from Percy Ingle (the bakery) and a Kebab for lunch.

Heidi meanwhile had begun a rather demanding course of study in Public Health in Developing Countries, which occupied all of her time, though also having its own pleasures and compensations. Her course was comprised of people from all over the developing and developed worlds, each seeking to further their education for a variety of reasons.

Another of the blessings of that area was our time at Christ Church Spitalfields, a venerable old establishment beside Spitalfields Market and Petticoat Lane. At the time of our attendance, the church was inter-regnum and sub-terranean—the former in that we were without priest, and the latter in that we met below stairs or, rather, in the Crypt, while the church proper was under renovation.

Our time in the Anglican church provided a needed and welcome respite from the particular denomonational heresies of our upbringing—the witlessand dangerous synchertism of nationalist fervour and capitalist politics with the life of the Church; and a deliberate disregard for the poor (this may be stated rather more strongly than I feel, perhaps).

Christ Church Spitalfields was, for us, a community of people who were engaged with the community of which they were apart. Many of the parishioners worked with prostitutes, drug addicts and new immigrants in that community, whilst others worked investigating human rights abuses for the UN, attending our meetings only sporadically. I would not want to gloss this past more rosey than is plausible, but we found our time there encouraging at a time when we were easily mired in anxieties and doubts.