As cemeteries go, you can't get finer

I ran into a friend and her daughter (both friends) in the street yesterday, and the daughter said that she enjoyed reading this blog.

I slightly panicked and attempted to cast my mind back over the last year or two's worth of posts, trying to remember if I had drunkenly written anything of a particularly obscene or offensive nature, but my mind went completely blank in the few seconds they stood smiling, waiting for me to respond.

I have to admit that sometimes I wake up at about 3.00 a.m. in a cold sweat, remembering only fragments of something written in anger (or worse) a few hours before passing out, imagining an imminent police raid to arrest me for any manner of socially unacceptable threats, promises, lewd remarks or inappropriate selfies.

Sometimes I get up very early, intending to delete a post before anyone has seen it, but many of you get up that early every day in any case, and the time-zone differences mean that those in the rest of the world who can be bothered to read this have already done so and, of those, the ones who leave comments have already done so too. Surprisingly to me, most of these rogue posts are usually  met with approval or even agreement, so I leave them standing like a brave boy. The night is always darkest just before dawn.

"I read your blog to find out what is going on in Bath" said the Bathonian mother. She sounds as if she may be my first customer of the forthcoming 'Hidden Bath' walking tours. I can just see it now - standing in Waitrose surrounded by groceries, pointing at the terrazzo floor and saying, On this spot in 1736, a duel was fought between the landlord of the Dolphin Inn and Lord Dingleberry. I made up Dingleberry, but there was a Dolphin Inn nearby.

This is the friend who discovered the marble carving of Hermes and Dionysius lying around in her garden of her house up the hill. Well, actually I discovered it. She bought it with the house.

She recently mentioned it to a local historian who we both know (ex Roman Bath conservation officer/architect, etc.) and he said that there were many Roman cemeteries and graves from outside the North Gate where I live, to right up the hill where she lives.

Maybe my tours will include her cosy house with its stunning Southerly views over Bath and the other six hills which surround it (Wood the Elder declared that, like Rome, Bath was 'built on seven hills' in a transparent attempt to attract tourists and generally big-up the little town which calls itself a city.)

I can see it now. A group of bored tourists standing around on her garden terrace, and me pointing at a flower bed saying: On this spot in 300 AD there was a fine Roman cemetery...