pumpkinstrokemarrow

The BH explained that gate was a Viking word for road and so Notting Hill Gate was perhaps the road to Notting Hill. Hmm sezzaye. Back home, perusal of the OED revealed two sorts of gate. One, Old English, meaning, amongst other things, the ordinary sort of gate. Two, Old Norse, meaning, amongst other things (one of which was gait), way or road. One point to BH. But then I take a poke at Wikipedia which tells me that Notting Hill Gate was named for the turnpike gate at Notting Hill, on the Uxbridge Road. One point each.

Fight our way into the large roundabout at the bottom of the West Cross Route and come across a Thames Water tower which I believe to be one of the safety valves for London's ring main. A steel and glass (or plastic) tower about the size and shape of a laundry chimney. It rather looked as if water would vent, or perhaps spout, out of the thing when the pressure was up. Sadly no such thing while we were there.

Once across, head into Holland Park where we find two or three more quite decent looking cake shops. Annoying, as on our last visit we had searched Queensway without success for one although I am sure that there used to be cake shops on Queensway. Into Notting Hill where we find a well stocked classical record shop. Very pleased to find Barenboim looking very young and doing two sorts of Schubert impromptus reduced from £5 to £3, something I had been keeping an eye out for some weeks. Should have bought the boxed set of Schubert piano sonatas but didn't. Then on into Kensington Palace Gardens to admire all the posh houses there. Most of which appeared to be of a diplomatic flavour and most of which declined to identify themselves. That and the fancy fencing gave the place a rather sterile feel. Somewhat mitigated by an oriental gentleman popping out of one of the big houses dragging his green wheelie bin. We hoped that he had read his leaflet properly and got the right bin out on the right day - although he could probably claim diplomatic immunity if harassed by the recycling police.

At the bottom we came across a heavily guarded house. Three policemen with machine guns and a number of the black steel cassions, like the ones used to protect Big Ben. A regular fortress which turned out to be the Israeli embassy. It was sad to see this evidence for such persisting hate for a state which had been founded in such unhappy circumstances.

A sadness compounded by my reading of Eugene Rogan on the Arabs. A sorry tale. It is not easy to see how we might have made it all come right, given the messy demise of the Ottoman empire, but we and the French certainly seem to have been major contributors to it all coming wrong. This including a great deal of nugatory bloodshed and worse. All sorts of things that I did not know about the region. So what is now the United Arab Emirates started life as the pirate states which made a truce with the Brits. to stop being pirates and to become the Trucial States - this back in the days when Britannia really did rule most of the waves. And at the time the French started on Algeria, back in 1830 or so, they had not paid the Algerians for lots of grain which they had bought off them. Massive loss of life in Algeria over the next 130 years. Although, to give the French their due, it is alleged in an article in a recent LRB, that the post-colonial loss of life in Francophone Africa has been massively less than in other parts of Africa. This despite the rather dodgy regimes. The Germans get off rather lightly in all this, as, as losers, they did not get any of the spoils from the Ottomans after the first world war.

But there was the odd consolation for us Brits.. We were not all bad. So, for example, the idea of mandates was not off the wall. The places being mandated were probably not in good enough shape for immediate self government and did need a big brotherly helping hand. If only we could have restrained ourselves to just that.

Excellent book, but one which might have been improved by the inclusion of a few more maps. Including, preferably, one of those ones which folds out of the back of the book and can be consulted as one reads, rather than have to keep jumping backwards and forwards. Something that modern publishers, despite all the elaborate machinery available these days, seem loathe to do.

A more banal sadness on rereading 'Boule de Suif'. Sadness that there should be so much casual cruelty knocking about the world. OK, so it is only a story, but one which one feels is rooted in real behaviour.