I'm sure plenty of you have played Where's Wally? (or Where's Waldo? as it's known in the USA) plenty of times -- but now it's time to play WHERE'S DARREN?!?

I had a brilliant time watching one of my favourite bands, Pixies, over the weekend. I caught the train up to Galway with a couple of my cousins (Ronan and Kealan) and best friend Kenny (some of you might remember him as Pablo from the old Message Board on my web site) on Friday, and saw them in action in a big tent. Then, on Saturday, as the other three recovered (Pixies concerts can be pretty rowdy if you're up near the front!), I caught another train, this time to Dublin, where I met with another cousin of mine (Tiernan) and saw them play outdoors in the beautiful Iveagh Gardens.

They were immense on both nights, tearing through more than thirty songs on Friday, and close to 40 on Saturday! I probably preferred the Saturday gig overall, because although it started quite calmly, a huge mosh pit soon developed, and even though I'm a fifty year old man who should know better, I couldn't resist throwing myself into the heart of it, and spent most of the night moshing as if I was in my early thirties and seeing them for the first time!

I limped away from the concert (literally -- I sprained a muscle in my right calf quite early on, but didn't let that deter me!), beaten, bruised and exhausted, but ecstatically happy. While Mr Crepsley will always be my favourite out of all the characters I've created, Dervish Grady (from my Demonata series) is the one I've always wanted to most emulate. He maintained his punkish spirit all the way to the end of his life, even as he grew older and greyer, and I hope that I do too. Based on this week's evidence, I'm doing OK so far -- there's life in the old dog yet!! :-)

Here's a photo that was posted by the Pixies team. If you look to the right hand side of the bottom of the microphone in front of the lead singer (the bald guy in the middle of the stage), and follow it upwards, I'm the second face in the crowd, with Tiernan just behind me. This was snapped before we moved more centrally, cried Havoc! and let slip the dogs of war!!!

Oh, and if the attached photo proves too small for you to spot me, here's the link for the original Twitter post, in which the snap is a LOT bigger: https://twitter.com/PIXIES/status/1548660371313119235