Electric Picnic:Dining at the picnic last year, Róisín Ingleentered Ronan Keating's head, missed Duke Special, and lost her brother

I wolfed down my first picnic last year but emerged with only mild indigestion. It helped that as a guest of the Leviathan tent I scored an "artist" wristband. I flashed it at every opportunity around Stradbally but nobody else seemed bothered. The seasoned picnickers are a stylish lot, most of them looking like they could pass muster on the main stage - with or without a wristband. I, meanwhile, didn't look like I'd be having drinking competitions backstage with Karen O any time soon. I had a yoke on my wrist, though. Result.

I spent the weekend looking for my brother. "Call me," he'd said, but his mobile was maddeningly and constantly out of reach. So the "artist" in me gravitated towards Leviathan where I'd been asked to read from my favourite music biography. To a rapt crowd of, oh, at least 11, I read excerpts from Life Is a Rollercoaster by Ronan Keating. Beside me, global nomad Manchán Magan was telling a heart-wrenching rock'n'roll story about the Hollywood actress who stole his heart. Ever the gentleman, he refused to divulge who she was. My money was on a post-Something About Mary, pre-Justin Timberlake Cameron Diaz. Cammie, love, you missed out big-time there.

Leviathan, by the way, is well worth checking out if only to catch a glimpse of your host, David McWilliams, who a woman with dreadlocks declared was "the thinking chick's festival totty". I couldn't possibly comment.

In the distance I could hear a guy-linered Duke Special crooning Freewheel on the Big Tree stage. He was the one person I didn't want to miss. I thought, briefly, about sneaking out under the flaps of the tent to see the Duke. I had my own audience to think of, though. By now there were at least 13 people hanging on Ronan's every word. And anyway, I was supposed to be meeting the brother here. Leviathan was our "failsafe-in-case-the-mobile-doesn't-work-emergency-meeting-place".

The brother didn't turn up. As the sun went down I drank cider by a fire in the Body & Soul area. There was incense burning and dreamcatchers hanging from trees. I thought of Féile in Thurles back in the day. Then you checked your soul at the turnstiles and your body was lucky to score a curly hang sangwich down in Semple Stadium. Here, people were eating all manner of pies, fajitas and queuing up for Indian head massages.

I bumped into my missing brother on Sunday night as the Pet Shop Boys blasted into Go West - or was it West End Girls? Dancing around to songs of yore - well, the 1980s - was hot and sweaty work, so later we bunked into a cordoned-off section of the picnic where you could eat as much free ice-cream as you liked and watch people as they lay recuperating in teepees. The Electric Picnic. Like a rollercoaster. You just have to ride it.