Nottinghamshire 10 - Newark /the heating is working and always was/the lights are fixed/a town square,a bacon sandwich and the parliamentarians who wrecked the font

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In the darkness of an early morning I coughed and spluttered. The cold that I had developed was playing havoc with my sleep. I lay awake waiting for dawn. Trying to find things to do to pass the slowly ticking away hours. One twelfth of the year has gone. January has disappeared and February with its changeable weather has arrived. As I fitfully sleep I hear the wind, I feel the cold, I wish for warmer temperatures and pray we have no snow. It does come. Tiny snowflakes . So far not enough to cause trouble but enough to coat the fields with white as we drive Gabby to an appointment with the equivalent of the doctors to have her lights fixed and her heater sorted. The trees look like a jolly Christmas card , sugar coated with white. It feels cold. We discuss the cold. We don't want to be here. We want to be somewhere else. Somewhere with a promenade to walk along, a café or two for a coffee and a cake , a menu of the day, a warm breeze. Oh how our thoughts flit from this cold Nottinghamshire morning to Spain, Sicily and beyond. Dreams - that is all we have today.

We wonder how long Gabby will be in at the dealers. If it were only the lights it would be just long enough to sit down and drink a coffee. Who knows with the heating? How long is a piece of string? We discuss what to do whilst we wait . Hang around , go for a walk into Newark. It will be the fourth time that we have visited the town. The first was to visit the castle and impressive it was too. The second to pick Gabby up. We didn't see much that time. The third was a walk into town and a quick coffee. Today if we walked in would we actually see anything any different. The thought for the day on my calendar suggested to me as I read it in the wee small hours that " I have been a seeker and still am" Yes quite true. I always wanted to travel, I always treated every town, city or country as a new adventure and always looked for things to see and do. So today would be no different. OK we have seen Newark a few times but it is a town with a civil war museum we have not visited, it has interesting architecture and an imposing church . So way to go as they say.

Arriving we booked Gabby in,. discussed the faults, filled in the paperwork, drank a coffee and talked about the weather. Something we British do with a vengeance . Perhaps because it is so unpredicatable we find it an easy ice breaker. There is always something to comment on. Snow in Nottinghamshire - none back home. We left Gabby and walked into town. Even with a scarf on the wind and cold chilled my face. The cold found its way through my gloves and even my fingers felt as if they were suffering from frostbite . It wouldn't be like this in Spain or Greece . We wouldn't be standing in an wind chilled square shivering and trying to warm up eating bacon butties.

The square looked a little like France if you used your imagination. An eclectic mix of styles of buildings. One from the Art Deco 20's - perhaps it had been a cinema back in the day. A Tudor black and white higgledy piggledy cottage owned by someone rich and influencial . The Georgian Buttermarket and everything in between. In one corner a wonderfully decorated Tudor building. In the summer with the chairs spilling out into the street it would be positively continental. All that was missing were plane trees to break it up and provide shade and people. It was 9 in the morning so a bit early. The place was dead. No-one but us walking the streets, No shoppers buying or window shopping - nothing .

The phone rang . We have sorted the heating out . We switched it on and it worked. We couldn't find any problem with it . Did you switch the gas on? Yes we did . We checked that. We switched it on and off and on again and it would not work. We tried the gas to the cooker. Nothing wrong there . Did we feel foolish? A little but then it did not work for us so something was not working right. The lights were in the wrong way and one was broken. Well we didn't turn them the wrong way. One works now but you will need to pay £50 for a new light . Oh no we wont - new van , under guarantee. Lets go in the church and then make our way back and see what happens next.

The church with its steeple is dark and dirty outside as if it has blackened by a fire in the dim and distant past or been coloured by the smoke from many industrial chimneys. The spire was struck by lightening at one point. The doorway is ancient and the lintels above it plain. It must have seen many parishioners walking through it over the centuries. None of the sculpture you see on continental churches or our fancy medieval cathedrals. Plinths that once were full of statues now sit empty. The present church is the third on this site. The Saxon church which preceeded it was in the manor of the Earl of Mercia and his wife the Lady Godiva . She of the riding on horseback naked as the day she was born through Coventry. The octagonal spire is 72 m high and apparently is the highest in the county of Nottinghamshire .There are some remnants to be seen on it of the previous tower and spire completed earlier in 1350. The front door was closed but a sign suggested that if we went round the back to the south door we would find it open .

It is impressive in scale inside but it is a church was damaged badly by the Parliamentarians who completely wrecked the font and reputedly fired a musket ball through the spire , Some stained glass was in place but many of the windows were clear. Many memorials were placed on the walls.

As we walked up we looked up at the roof which was heavily restored by the Victorians. The plastered ceilings were removed and replaced with dark oak. The galleries had been removed as had the pews. The Victorian replacements were darkened oak and rather sombre. I am not sure this was one of Sir Gilbert Scotts finest church works. The stonework of the pillars and the arches had been cleaned and the floor replaced with Minton Tiles in typical Victorian fashion.

We did find pretty side chapels, one dedicated to the dead from the Great War, A modern rather plain but interesting carving of Mary and the dying Christ in her arms on the wall was not quite what we had expected. It was different, modern , somewhat both out of keeping with the building but nevertheless stunningly simple and pleasing.

We could hear talking. A service was going on so we had to peep through the choir stalls to the reredos. Gold and painted it was a work of art - one of the most interesting ones we have seen locally. I keep pinching myself looking at it - if it were in France or Spain I would be going wow - yet here it seemed rather out of place . Catholic in its taste and ornamentation . It was a work of art though whichever way you looked at it.

The most interesting part though for me was something a bit neglected. Something a little grey and without much colour. In fact , Glenn walked past it hardly noticing it . A Dance of Death . You don't see many of these in churches now. Commonplace at one time they lead the congregation to think about life and death. The shortness of life and the inevitability of dying . The skeleton showing a man that he would soon die were in every church. They all or at least many of them were whitewashed and painted over . Forgotten about under the zeal of the reformists who got rid of all these old fashioned ideas. The skeleton was grey, decayed and with his finger he pointed to the young man dressed in red. A wealthy young man with his life ahead of him. Probably no thought of death is his mind as he enjoyed his life and his wealth. However this death was stalking him.

What did I enjoy most about this church ? It had to death and the skeleton. It reminded me that we have to make the most of what we have for we never know what tomorrow might bring.

Returning to the dealers we checked the heating . Never will find out what was wrong with it . They fixed the lights free of charge . We asked for a price on a larger solar panel and then drove home. A good day , we laughed at the heating, we were disappointed we never made a worthwhile trip to Hereford because of it, we decided the carpets we put in the front of Gabby were a good idea . They keep our feet warmer and make the floor less slippy. We are going to order a bracket from Germany for our Avtek TV. We practiced our German as the site was completely in that language . We paid and await the confirmation that they have the order. Knowing German efficiency it should be here by now. Strangely it has not arrived. So we are still getting on with equipping Gabby but there is still much to do and we need another trip out to iron out any other issues we have and get to know her every nook and cranny.

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