THE PR person standing beside me at the Guinness Jazz Festival press conference looked bewildered.
"is this Sunday?" he asked, genuinely confused.
I was sufficiently clued in to answer in the affirmative.
"My goodness," he said in the informative for that was his condition. And off he walked, shaking his head like the perplexed rabbit in Alice in Wonderland.
The test of a Cork Jazz stalwart is to survive through to the festival's final session at daybreak tomorrow, to then eat a hearty breakfast of liver and bacon and journey home to Dublin, Galway Belfast or wherever, refreshed and musically reinvigorated.
I had doubts whether my friend, a veteran of this 19th festival, would be in such fit condition. But perhaps he'll rally.
Yes, once again it's been a lively weekend in Cork, resonant with some excellent music, replete with social lunacy.
Louis Armstrong was once asked what jazz was. "If you gotta ask, you'll never know," he famously replied.
Joe Lovano, the American saxophonist, who divided critical opinion with his marvellous anarchic improvisational jazz, did make a stab at an explanation. "Jazz is a social music," he said yesterday.
Simple but perfectly apt for what is flowing at the Guinness Jazz Festival this bank holiday weekend. Social, though, perhaps understates the delirium and joyous frenzy of the occasion.
Guinness festival director Brian Brown described the weekend as the "last knees up before Christmas".
But if the estimated 40-45,000 revellers are to cut loose similarly this Yuletide they will need friendly bank managers.
Apart from the hundreds of musicians and the thousands of bartenders pulling porter to beat the band, the busiest people in Cork this weekend were those bankers delegated to keep the hole in the wall cash dispensing machines stuffed with money.
Day and night the queues at the machines were as long as those to the bar counters. But it was all funny money, for as soon as the crisp fivers, tenners and £20 notes came into people's possession they disappeared like fairy dust, necessitating further lengthy queueing.
Pat Barry, the Guinness press officer, estimates the festival brings in additional revenue of about £7 million for Cork. But observing the thronged pubs, restaurants and hotels even that figure, seems conservative.
The jazz festival attracts two types of visitor, the aficionado and the party punter.
The former quietly finds his or her place at the front of the sessions, listening avidly as the likes of Clark Terry, Harry "Sweets" Edison, Benny Golson, Spike Robinson and Louis Stewart weave their magic.
The latter bounces along to the jive bands, the jazz fusion outfits, and even the acid jazz groups.
Generally it works well. There is more than enough on offer for the buff while the likes of Van Morrison, King Pleasure and the Biscuit Boys and the Jive Aces satisfy the less committed.
But there were the occasional mismatches. Classy guitarists Jimmy Gourley and Trefor Owen did not suit their bar venue in Jury's Hotel. As they played, the noisy crowd loudly drank and chatted, totally ignoring them. This was a jive audience, no fans of bebop.
One man even had the temerity to interrupt Owen while he was soloing. "Do you know anything from Jungle Book?" he asked. Owen, a Welshman, delivered a disgusted two word Saxon response.
Guinness dealt reassuringly with the annual Cork paranoia about the festival. "No," said Brian Brown once again. "There is no danger of the festival being transferred to Dublin. It stays in Cork."
He was even fairly confident that the festival would see its way into the next millennium "although ultimately that will be a matter for Guinness's board of directors".
The music was good this year, sometimes outstanding, much more hits than misses. More on that tomorrow.
