Gentrification, which progressed gently through neighbourhoods in Islington and Camden in the decades after the second world war, is now changing the city at terrifying pace.
There was something almost prosaic about the way the sleek white train pulled out of the city terminal: no whoosh, jolt or roar as it progressed gently through a long, lazy curve, passing the station's flowered gardens, farmers' plots and then a jumble of factories.
Although the trail began gently, it progressed over several mountains with paths as narrow as 2 feet and in wider parts covered with boulders and sharp rocks.
If the color change has progressed too far, or if you would like to create a more uneven, antique look, gently scrub the patina with steel wool or a paste made from baking soda and a few drops of water.
Many people use sex toys, as well as fingers or tongues, to gently explore the anus before progressing to full penetration by a penis.
In both, one feels as the book progresses that this gently middlebrow tone just shouldn't be sucked into recounting these awful events; the apt comparison, perhaps, is with Armistead Maupin's Tales of the City series which, despite determined chirpiness and technical limitations, still found itself having to chronicle the Aids crisis.
Air currents cause the curtains to billow gently so that visitors may have to push the cloth away as they progress.
She sits down with each reject, at least later in the season, and gently tells him that she thinks he's just wonderful, but their relationship wasn't progressing quickly enough, or they didn't have that spark.
Salisburians think things are moving too fast for them; they gently fight progress.
Gently at first, progressing to violent shakes.
The album is dominated by the sea, with several songs written as observations from Cave's Brighton study window overlooking the beach, and the music progressing as a series of gently pulsing waves, each song pushing the next forward: it's an old-style album, intended to be listened to in full, and it's hard to leave it partway through.
