For a whole complex of reasons to do with the natural scratchiness of neighbours, fascism, communism and bad experiences in Parisian cafés, most people are hostile not just to the idea of "ever closer union" that is embedded in the European Union's founding Treaty of Rome, but also to its most tangible expression, membership of the European single currency.
The scratchiness, frigidity and occasional pomposity of their predecessors, Gerhard Schröder, Jacques Chirac and Tony Blair, who between them have dominated European debate for around a decade, are a thing of the past, as is the biggest bone of contention: the decision to go to war in Iraq in March 2003.
It coincides with a general scratchiness between America and its ally.
"We put up with the scratchiness of vinyl but when CDs came along those imperfections became the art and charm of the object.
Since then, when he has scored runs, it has been with a mix of scratchiness and pluck, not always class.
Every September he endured a fortnight of scratchiness.
Upstairs, he was only a flicking shadow, the taut muscles of a back and the scratchiness of a cheek.
But now there was this undeniable imperfection, a scratchiness and swollenness familiar only from the distant past.
Before leaving Beijing to take up his ambassadorial post in April, Mr. Cui suggested to those around him the urgent need for the two leaders to know each other and to meet privately — somewhere outside the capitals, he said — so the recent scratchiness of the United States-China relationship could be smoothed.
He set a tone that guaranteed scratchiness on all fronts, from whingeing about whingeing in the press, to meetings between match officials about the rise in sledging on the field and, in particular, the habit of patting an opponent on the head whenever he gave away a penalty.
Yet it remains just far enough from the madding crowds, as the intermittent weakness of phone signal and the car radio's scratchiness can attest.
