My parka has this on the back:

(which gets me into lots of trouble at a funeral later in the year) and these on either shoulder:



(My grandmother sewed the shoulder patches on, but the Slayer one was a bit too Satany so my mother sorted that one)

Anyway, I am complementing my parka with boot runners and as I say toodle-pip to my Auntie Ann, I feel like I'm the fucking business.


11.30am

We queue to get in. A guy five places ahead of me is refused entry because he has four vodka bottles tied to his neck with baler twine. He doesn't take this to heart and climbs up on an enormous skip in an attempt to scale the wall. Sadly, he overbalances and tumbles in.

Unluckily for him, the skip is empty so he can't climb out. The queue moves on as he batters the inside of the skip and hollers his way through what sounds like Venom's third album (the angry one).


12pm



The place is still sparsely populated, so we cop a comfortable squat beside the vast speaker stack in the centre of the field. I gobble a hang sangich and look around. Heaven, man. Metalheads everywhere.

Unfortunately, I catch the eye of something which obviously made it off the island of Dr Moreau. Welsh accent, intergalactic gut, disastrous triangular curly mullet on a big sweltering head and...fuck me, is he eating a whole roast chicken? I spin round a bit too sharpish and hold my breath.

Five minutes pass.

THUNK. I close my eyes and do not move. My cousin manages to confirm between racked guffaws that yes, I have been hit in the back of the head by a chicken carcass. I politely ask if we can move a few hundred yards away. He graciously accepts.

This is kind of like him. Much fatter though. And more cornbeef-coloured. Wearing a strained MARILLION t-shirt. And administering fevered cunnilingus to roast fowl.


12.30pm



The Bailey Brothers start MCing.
"Are you all ready to ROCK!?!"
Fuckin' hell.
"I can't hear you!"
Stop, my feet hurt and we're ages away from the first act.
"Okay, repeat after me, ROCK not POP".
What the fuck?
"ROCK not POP".
Some of the crowd are already slaughtered on the local cider and they roar incoherently along while attempting to cling onto the ground.


Slight Tangent

The organisers of the Monsters of Rock know their punters. This is why the boisson du jour was some sort of rancid scrumpy effort lovingly presented in a petrol gallon.

Voila:



These piccies can be found 1:20 into a little bit of Megadeth's performance at Donington in 1988.

Guzzling from one of these babies was a delicate art. You didn't just upend it or you got cider down the front and back of your t-shirt, up your nose and in your ears. You had to tilt it at a gradual angle to ensure an even pour of the sweet nectar. It also served as a handy latrine and projectile (see below).


1pm

It starts.

Un connoisseur des cidres somewhere towards the back of the field shows an entrepreneurial flair by stuffing Mr Winkie into his empty petrol gallon and letting the good times flow.

Ta-daa! No need for an irksome walk to the john. "I'm not finished yet!", he says to the already-impressed onlookers. Whoosh! He lobs it off into the distance, helicopter-stylee.

Ta-daa! No need for an irksome search for an appropriate place to dispose of the mobile latrine. The crowd can only look on in awe as his petrol gallon spins through the air, spraying scrumpy piss in all directions. Word spreads like wildfire. In a matter of minutes, everyone's at it. The sky fills with petrol gallons, piss, mud, and the odd shoe.

I take a few inevitable clonks and some soakage. This better be worth it.

Not a great piccy but you get the idea. Those things in the sky are not helicopters.

Part 2