Multitude
I usually bristle when observers refer to an "amount" of people. After all, people can be counted and therefore you should use the term "number". However, yesterday in London the use of "amount" would have seemed perfectly acceptable. The city was thronging because of the forty fifth London marathon. To start with, it had the biggest ever field of runners for any marathon anywhere - 56.000 entrants. But for every runner there seemed to be ten spectators. If my theory is correct, that would mean a crowd of half a million. I can well believe that is true. Our Ian set out for Greenwich Park - the starting point - at eight in the morning but his wave did not get going until 10.30. At that time, Shirley and I were on the tube system (American: subway) . At Westminster, we changed from the District line to the Jubilee line which took us south of the river to Canada Water tube station. Every carriage of the train was jam-packed. We were like sardines in ...