Sights and sounds:At the alternative universe that is the Electric Picnic in Stradbally, Co Laois, incongruous sights and sounds quickly become the norm.
The Government Minister and the economist going hammer and tongs over climate change? That would be the Leviathan debate with Minister for the Environment Eamon Ryan and others doing the shouting and the godfather of the "Pope's Children" David McWilliams doing the marshalling.
The tree transformed into a giant marshmallow? That would be artist James Robertson's installation on the fascinating arts trail, where a tree is covered in fabric and lit from within.
Sly Stone doing I Want to Take You Higher? That would be a screening of Woodstock: The Movie in the cinema tent.
And the festival newspaper? That would be The Ticket, the publication from this newspaper's entertainment supplement, produced from a shed in a field, printed offsite and distributed to Picnic-goers on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
When the Electric Picnic takes over Thomas Cosby's acres in the middle of Stradbally for a weekend every September, you could say that the circus really comes to town. Appropriately, this year's event saw performances from Fossett's Circus aerialists, jugglers, acrobats and clowns.
Now in its fourth year, the Electric Picnic, which drew more than 30,000 fans, stands head and shoulders above every other Irish music event because the organisers realise that a modern music festival has to be about more than just shelling out loads of money for big-name bands. It's about attention to detail and providing lots and lots of variety.
The festival's target audience is not young kids away from their mammies for the first time or oldsters with more money than sense forking out large wads of cash to see dinosaurs in action.
The largely twentysomething and thirtysomething picnickers are experienced festival-goers, so promoters POD Concerts and Aiken Promotions have found a winning formula by taking the best elements of international festivals like Glastonbury and Coachella and adding some Irish twists. You can see that they've got their audience right by the number of corporate brands who have latched onto the festival in the hope some of the cool and kudos rub off on them.
For the audience, though, it's the fact that the weather doesn't turn Stradbally Hall's field into mud and muck which lifts the atmosphere rather than a car company sponsoring the Silent Disco, a video games firm filling a tent with their wares or a mobile phone operator running a rave. Yet the Picnic is a festival so complaints about traffic chaos, toilet conditions, lengthy queues and, yes, outrageous rip-offs will be aired. The worst rip-off this reporter spotted was a stall charging €5 to repower your mobile for an hour.
That adage about shopping around was apt when you later discovered there was a mobile phone tent a couple of hundred yards away giving away free disposable recharging kits.
The musical menu was every jot as tasty as the range of food available from the dozens of eating and drinking stalls. Yesterday morning within the space of an hour you could have caught such Irish acts as The Flaws, Halves, Fight Like Apes, Si Schroeder and the wonderful Lisa Hannigan, former sidekick with Damien Rice.
Every Picnic goer, though, will leave Co Laois with their own musical highlights. The Beastie Boys slam-dunking through a greatest hits set, Erasure's camp-as-Christmas pop, the full-frontal electro-rock of LCD Soundsystem and former Pulp singer Jarvis Cocker singing The Boys Are Back In Town were some of the performances mentioned in despatches.
Others will, no doubt, have their own favourites, both musical and non-musical, to remember until the Picnic returns next year.