Blog: A Day Trip To Leeds

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On Wednesday I headed up to distant LEEDS to do a talk about MY RESEARCH JOURNEY (i.e. Doctor Doom and how I ended up doing a PhD/Book/Musical/etc about him) at Leeds Arts University.

I'd been booked AGES ago so had been able to get an entirely reasonable ticket price for going first class, which was LOVELY all the way to Wakefield, at which point the train ground to a halt as, apparently, another train had broken down just ahead of us and now Leeds station was CLOSED. After twenty minutes or so someone burst into my carriage and annouced that a few BRAVE SURVIVORS were getting a taxi to Leeds if anyone wanted to join them and I LEAPT at the chance. I'd given myself a good TWO HOURS leeway for getting there but even so I was started to panic. THUS I ended up getting an EXCEEDINGLY reasonably priced taxi with a group of Professional People, during which I think I managed to just about hold my end up with the PROFESSIONAL CHAT.

Once arrived I strode across Leeds to FINALLY visit OK Comics (after not getting to do so at multiple Comics Forums), which was ace, and then walk the rest of the way to Leeds Arts University to be met by Mr H Gronnet, who had booked me. As I say, I was there to talk about my RESEARCH and how that had progressed from a PhD to a book to a musical and so on, but as soon as we discovered that Henry and I do pretty much the same job at our respective institutions there was also quite a lot of REF CHAT. That was GRATE!

I didn't really know what size or shape of audience I would have so, as ever, I simply assumed it would be STADIUM-SIZED and wrote my presentation to suit. I did a similar thing last year when I did The Lakes Festival - in fact I pretty much always do and I don't really why, as so far it never actually HAS been stadium-sized. This time around I was talking to a small group of academics in a normal-sized lecturer theatre, with a similar number of people attending online, so to start with I felt like some kind of LOONIE shouting and - especially - SINGING at them, but I adapted as I went along and, I think, so did they.

Another thing I always seem to do is entirely forget what I had actually SAID I was going to talk about, so when my original ABSTRACT was read out at the start I realised that I hadn't included HALF of the stuff I said I would, and so I spent a lot of time trying to SHOEHORN that in at appropriate moments. To be honest though, having to make great chunks of it up as I go along is what I enjoy MOST about doing gigs, so I had a lovely time, especially when we got into the second half of the session and QUESTIONS. Yet another thing I do in these situations is to become INTENSELY CONSCIOUS of the fact that I am talking A LOT, which is objectively fine because that is what they have asked me there to do, but still years of being AWARE of this in social situations is hard to shake off!

I did manage to shut up at some points and leave space for multiple INTERESTING THORTS and IDEAS from everyone else, which was lovely. However, all too soon it was over and after saying my farewells I headed back into town to pay a visit to North Bar, where I had had plenty of fun times after Comics Forum last year, and then to look sorrowfully upon a temporarily closed ZAM ZAMS, where The Validators have eaten so heartily in the past. Denied the chance to dine there I instead I paid tribute to other Validator Adventures by going to Doner Summer (yes, it was mostly the name that made me go there) for a DELICIOUS, also ENORMOUS plate of BERLINER (vegan) DONER and FRIED.

It was thus a very FULL but also very HAPPY Hibbett who staggered through the streets of Leeds to get my train home, this time without the need for taxis. More of this sort of thing please!

posted 28/1/2026 by MJ Hibbett

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