Sunday, and I am doing some father-son bonding by taking the boy to a manga comic drawing workshop, part of the Bradford Literature Festival taster weekend.

We arrive in the city centre early so go to eat fried chicken and watch people being all healthy on their bikes as part of the Sky Ride in the the City Park, before walking up to the venue, which is at a Bradford College building.

I have diligently loaded up the postcode of the venue into Google Maps and noted that it will take 16 minutes at a leisurely stroll, so we set off in good time for the David Hockney Building, which my directions tell me is right up Morley Street and near the Trinity Green campus.

Now, you are already shouting at me that the David Hockney Building is, in fact, that new, colourful glass affair on the main college campus.

Yes, I know that now. Because as we trolled around the closed Trinity Green campus it slowly dawned on me that I didn't quite know where I was meant to be.

"No problem," I told the boy. He said nothing, perhaps shuddering at a repressed memory of me driving up and down the Provence coast in the dead of night some years ago having failed to look at a map for the location of our campsite.

Fortunately, there is one person in one of the college buildings. Less helpfully, he doesn't quite know which direction to send me. Either that or I don't listen properly, because minutes later we're jogging along residential streets where there are precisely no college buildings, named after David Hockney or otherwise.

I shout at a man smoking a cigarette on his doorstep for directions. He shrugs. A gaggle of women glance at me and smile, though cannot help. Two Polish builders point roughly back towards the city centre, though I feel that can't be right.

Then my eyes alight upon a taxi driver, vacuuming his vehicle outside his home. He's bound to know. I glance at my phone; two minutes to the start of the event.

The taxi driver is indeed very helpful and points out the way. "Are you in a hurry?" he says.

"Yes, how much will the fare be to the Hockney building?"

He puts his mats back in the car and bids us hop in, driving a few minutes and bringing us up to the David Hockney Building door, which I realise with a sinking stomach is about 30 seconds' walk from the city centre.

"No charge," says the taxi driver. I thrust a handful of coins at him by way of a tip and he drives off, no doubt to vacuum his car out again after we messed it up. What a nice man.

Fortunately, the manga comic workshop is running a few minutes late so we are, by dint of a miracle, precisely on time for it. The artist leading the workshop starts talking about conveying the sense of movement and speed through this Japanese art form.

Yup, I think, we've got that one nailed already.