The strands, woven together, make a clear pattern. Whatever they tell market researchers from time to time, not enough Scottish voters presently have any true appetite for going it alone. Sometimes it involves armed struggle. Sometimes, in the reunification of Germany or the velvet divorce between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the issue is handled with peaceful civilisation. But, peaceful or not, there is always a common thread.
Nothing comes easy.
West Germany, still trapped in recession, has paid and paid for the gift of the East. Slovakia would be richer and happier today if it had stayed with Prague. But nationalism, because it is fire and a dream, accepts such penalties with fortitude. Almost 20 per cent of the SNP's 1998 supporters, on a brutal extrapolation of their sinking commitment, aren't prepared to forgo the cash equivalent of a couple of pints of best Scottish bitter for the cause. It is the missing voters, not the loyalists that remain, who count.