Whole hours pass these days when I feel unprecedented affection for President McAleese and Martin, their children, our little republic, and the founding fathers who freed us from the yoke of monarchy, writes Kathy Sheridan.
Are we not blessed to have a head of state who shows no inclination to show up mid-morning at Leinster House, in full-on, shimmering evening regalia and jewelled crown, to read the government's legislative programme from a roll of hand-inscribed goat skin? Or with her son, who desists from summoning passing varlets to hold the specimen bottle while he provides a urine sample for the doctor?
Anyone who has not been mildly titillated by revelations from the House of Windsor in recent weeks, is surely tired of life. All that funny stuff with the butlers, valets and pages of the backstairs with their eye-watering array of sexual orientations; that business involving unwanted royal gifts and Charles' "indispensable" aide, aka Fawcett the Fence; the paternal letters from Prince Philip to Diana, in which "trollop" is the sweetest word; the heroic orator, Earl Spencer, who refused her refuge on the vast Spencer estate on grounds of his family's privacy, only to fling open the gates to hordes of privacy-busting plebs at £10.50 a pop once she was buried there.
The dominant spirit throughout has been the same: Diana, the woman who had herself chauffeured around Paddington of a wet evening to dole out "pink grannies" (£50 notes with her sons' Granny on the front) to prostitutes and to hurl the odd fur coat out the window at a beggar and who got a thrill out of phoning her eminent heart-surgeon lover just as he plunged the scalpel into an aorta. Not to mention his taste for Kentucky Fried Chicken
All good, finger-lickin' fun, with the extended Windsor tribe coming out of it as net contributors to the gaiety of nations.
Sadly, there is a point at which the nonsense becomes more sinister than silly. "There are powers at work about which we know nothing", the Queen is supposed to have said to Burrell the butler shortly after Diana's death. Imagine if our head of state went about, delivering such sotto voce warnings to lowly civil servants?
Think of the fevered editorials, the snorts of Vincent Browne, the outraged calls to Joe Duffy. What "powers" was she talking about? J.P. McManus, Fergus Finlay, Marguerite McDaid, al-Qaeda, MI5?
And who is this "we"? The royal "we", "we, my innocent family", "we, the family" or "we, along with all you little people"? How do "we" know that these "powers" exist when "we" claim to "know nothing" about them?
Why do "we" claim to know nothing about those "powers", since "we" are head of state and in pole position to demand answers?
And what exactly are "we" hoping to achieve by conveying this information to a lowly servant? A warning to stay schtum? A friendly hint to be careful out there?
Amazingly, across the water, while the butler's tale swamps the news agenda, this seriously loaded remark from the head of state has hardly registered. Not because no-one cares but because, in one of the world's most advanced nations, the citizenry cannot call its own head of state to account.
And consider this. When the butler was in court on charges of thieving from Diana, in the case of Regina v Burrell, the defendant, in effect, stood accused of thieving from Regina's daughter-in-law.
Then Regina herself became the star witness. Upon the Queen's blindingly sudden recollection of a conversation with the butler five years before - brought to the prosecutors' attention by Prince Charles - a hugely expensive case collapsed abruptly, in a backstairs deal, without any cross-examination of the star witness or, crucially, the defendant.
That her timely interjection certainly prevented the whole royal house of cards collapsing in a hideously embarrassing welter of revelations - including the alleged palace cover-up of an alleged rape by a senior courtier to Charles, and an "incident" involving a royal and a servant - seems rather pertinent. They may be the meanderings of an "unreliable alcoholic" but who knows?
The best the palace can offer is an internal inquiry, i.e. an internal probe led by Prince Charles' private secretary into an internal cover-up in which Charles has a lively interest. To crown it, although the collapse of the Burrell case will be a salient issue, the Queen will not be a witness.
Not necessary, says the private secretary, "because I was involved at the time. I already know a little about that". Meanwhile the centrepiece of the Queen's speech yesterday at opening of parliament was reform of the courts system.
Is that any way to run a country?
At least in our case, Charvet shirts were the height of it (we think).
So take a moment to offer up silent thanks for our nice, normal, intelligent President McAleese, her kind and courteous husband Martin, their fine, well-mannered children and the founding fathers of our flawed but really quite sensible Republic.