That Taoiseach and Tánaiste. They're worse than an old married couple. Falling out with each other one minute, mad about each other the next, writes Miriam Lord.
On Sunday, Michael McDowell declared they were on the verge of splitting up. Bertie Ahern shrugged his shoulders and sniffed that he wasn't bothered one way or the other.
By Tuesday, fate threw them together again in the close confines of the government jet. In the turbulent skies above Belfast, they resolved to give their relationship another try.
Yesterday, at the annual State commemoration of the 1916 Rising, Bertie and Michael stepped out in public for the first time since their spat. A couple again, although the atmosphere was still a little strained.
After attending the ceremonies at Dublin's Arbour Hill, the Taoiseach was surrounded by several senior members of his Fianna Fáil family, including Ministers Mary Hanafin and Noel Dempsey, and junior ministers Tom Kitt and Conor Lenihan.
Michael McDowell approached the in-laws, smiling broadly at Bertie.
He couldn't stick around for the tea and buns, but didn't want them to think he was in the throes of another hissy-fit.
"I'll love you and leave you," he said brightly, bidding the Taoiseach adieu. Then he turned on his heels and left. But he didn't go far, before racing back to the little group.
"I didn't mean that literally," he gushed. We didn't catch Bertie's reply to his high-maintenance partner.
"Missing you already." Perhaps? Maybe not.
Looking on at this touching scene was Fine Gael leader, Enda Kenny. While the Taoiseach did his duty up front, Enda stood to one side on the limestone flags, one hand tucked, Napoleon- style, inside his jacket. Chin tilted upwards, eyes closed, hair sculpted to perfection, he struck an impressively statesmanlike pose.
Were we imagining it, or did he open his eyes for just a moment to steal a glance across at the cameras?
Fresh from his triumph in Stormont the day before, the Taoiseach followed up with a trip across to Collins Barracks to view one of the last letters written by Padraig Pearse. This was one in the eye for his rival candidate in Dublin North Central, Sinn Féin's Mary Lou McDonald, who was working the crowd back in Arbour Hill.
Meanwhile, a brave Enda Kenny was setting out for Dublin city centre and Bertie's own backyard around Henry Street and Moore Street.
"I am here to hand out these surgical gels" intoned the Fine Gael leader to a media throng in front of the Rotunda Maternity Hospital, before launching an attack on the Government's poor record on fighting the MRSA hospital bug.
He held a clear plastic bottle up to the cameras as he spoke. He praised the staff of the Rotunda for performing so well in recent hygiene audits, before making a big show of squeezing some sanitising gel onto his hands and demonstrating how it should be used.
"I am here today," he repeated, to hand out some alcohol " Oh, thank God, we sighed, aware that large quantities of strong drink may be the only way to cope with the antics we've been forced to endure since this election campaign began.
" alcohol solution of surgical gels." Drat.
Having made liberal use of the surgical solution, Enda, like many men before him, left the Rotunda reeking of alcohol.
Has anybody considered the medical implications of hundreds of election candidates rampaging through the country, shaking hands and spreading germs?
Everyone wanted to know how the Mayo culchie would perform in Bertie's Dub-a-lin heartland.
He got a less enthusiastic response than he's been getting outside the city. The dyed-in-
the-wool Dubs he encountered were, in the main, polite, but not very amenable. But his breakneck canvass through Henry Street and Mary Street was fascinating. Time and again, people came up to introduce themselves and shake his hand. Almost all of them had one thing in common: they were not originally from Dublin.
"Hello Inda - Laois-Offaly!" "I'm Cavan myself." "Bangor Erris!" "We're Carlow." "Lovely to meet you. Ennis." And so it went, with smiling people sidling over and identifying themselves, like Enda, as blow-ins.
Had he hit on something? That huge swathe of people who live and work in Dublin, but cheer on anyone but the Dubs when there's a big match on in Croker? He met a woman from Finglas, held her hand and pinched the cheeks of her strapping ten-year -old. She giggled and loved the attention lavished on her son. The maul moved on. "I wouldn't vote for him in a fit, but you have to be polite," she said.
A young man wheeling a buggy was accosted. "In town for the day shopping?" asked the Fine Gael leader, slapping him on the back. Later the man relived the moment for a friend.
"Are ooo doooin' de shopin'?" he roared, doing his version of a country accent, and they fell around the place.
"Poor Bertie never did us any harm," said a local woman. "Who's yer man" asked her companion. "It's him with the hair." Enda didn't brave the Moore Street dealers, but bridled at suggestions he chickened out.
"Wasn't I in Fagans, in the pub, the Taoiseach's local?" he replied. "I was in Moore Street in December and I'll be back there before the campaign's out."
As for the true blue, he was doing the rounds in Ballyfermot and Crumlin. There's a lot of love there for Bertie, particularly among the older ladies. Phyllis and Carmel stalked him through the Ashleaf shopping centre. "I love ya, Bertie. Fianna Fáil! I love ya!" said Phyllis.
"It's like this, Bertie," begin the women, like they are confiding in an old friend. He seems less preoccupied than usual.
"Ah, dere's our fella. I remember you from outside the church. You're older looking now." Bertie leans in, whispers "sure we're all older."
But it's not all good. He is cornered in Tesco by another woman, who complains price are eating into her social welfare.
It's a quick canvass. "Sure it was only thirty thousand," says a woman in Dunnes, giving out to journalists. "That wouldn't buy you an ice-cream today."