We were recreating one of the great scenes from Spinal Tap, when the band gets lost backstage. Me and my band – wife and two nippers – along a passage, past Côte, up steps, down an alleyway, back on the main street, then down another passage, up some steps, past Côte. We stopped to ask someone: ‘Where’s The Gaff, do you know?’ They were nonplussed and probably wanted to say, ‘ask the Guv’nor’. We went into Côte. ‘Do you know where The Gaff is?’ ‘Turn right outside, left down the steps and it’s on the right,’ came the answer. It wasn’t, of course. But we found it eventually and very warm and friendly the welcome was, too. We were in a unison of surprise and delight; think Captain Oates coming back into the tent.
But Bath is, of course, a wonderful place to get lost in. Perhaps it’s a ploy of the city to enable visitors to continually come across further beautiful Georgian houses and streets, to be eternally grateful to John Wood, Elder and Younger, and Robert Adam, and to wish they’d been let loose on other places like Hull. Or Taunton.
