Perth's CBD is locked down this week for Gillard, Cabinet, CHOGM and another visit from the Queen.
Despite a rash of self-consciously visible 'security' guys, life in this land of the lotus-eaters is the usual boring, cow-like, steak-fed vacuity, but in a nice way: no cheering, no jeering, and no-one's even trying to occupy St George's Terrace.
There is no evident competition for invites to the Garden Party, or sense of excitement. Well-coiffed lawyers and mining entrepreneurs may be hardening their arteries in air-conditioned rooms, and the people are not on the Move.
In a simpler time (when I was simpler) a visit from our head of state seemed to make us feel better about ourselves, if not quite as excited as I was when she came to my home town in 1954.
Then, we were not long out of a war during which her handsome, kind and appealingly vulnerable father-king and formidably tranquil mother had played royal parents to their loyal Commonwealth. Now, their young and pretty, newly-married, -bereaved and -crowned daughter was visiting her colonies on the royal yacht.
Then, there were fairy lights; unselfconsciously red, white and blue bunting over the ruins of a burnt-out department store; a wondrous arch of fresh red, white and blue flowers, and I was one of the plump schoolgirls in bloomers feeling proud to perform synchronised calisthenics in rows, sorted by height, for the royal couple.
The magic was still there a little later, when I was first taught how to curtsey when, as the youngest pupil, I was selected to deliver to Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mother the requisite posy of flowers. Looking on, I felt devastated when a prettier girl was presented for the deed, but felt better when Patricia reported in horror that the Great Woman had black teeth, when you got up close.
I can still curtsey, but I won't. But I didn't mind stopping everything to watch the fairytale wedding of her eldest son Charles to Diana wearing a fashionably crumpled confection of silken bed sheets, when our queen's star was fading but the light of celebrity was upon Diana rather than the Prince of Wales, culminating in the aura that accompanied her desperately sad funeral not many years later.
When I was a child, I collected pictures of the royal family, models of the coronation coach, ceramic memorabilia of coronations past and present which my mother put proudly in her