Iceland, according to yesterday's Times, has a population “no larger than Coventry”. A few pages later we discover that the entire Icelandic citizenry “would fit comfortably into a suburb of St Petersburg”. Earlier I heard a commentator claim the Icelandic population approximated to Basingstoke's. On the radio, even less plausibly, I heard someone propose High Wycombe as the comparison.

Before this gets out of hand, don't yardsticks need standardising? I realise we ditsy readers have trouble getting our heads round the size of the population of Iceland, but do we breathe a relieved “Ah! Now I see!” on being invited to compare it with that of Coventry? How many of us have the least idea of size of Coventry? Or of how many people might fit into a suburb of St Petersburg?

We're getting into double-decker bus territory here. By my back-of-the-envelope calculations, the Icelandic population would fit into about 6,000 double-decker buses, which, piled on top of each other, would reach 600 times the height of Nelson's Column. If Icelanders all linked hands they would stretch from London to Leeds - whose population, incidentally, is twice the size of Iceland's.

Back of the class

But, seriously, this figures business is spinning out of control. The front pages of newspapers are spattered with unimaginable numbers and mysterious percentages, while broadcast news has begun to resemble a nightmarish maths lesson. What is 50 billion? I think it's about 133,000 times the size of Coventry. And is 250 billion a quarter of a trillion - ie, two million times the size of High Wycombe? And aren't American billions different from ours - or is it their trillions?

I think our trillions are a thousand times (about 20 double-decker buses-full) bigger than America's. There's scope here for a ghastly misunderstanding, in which HM Treasury extends a thousand times more funds to British banks than the US Treasury extended to American banks, in the mistaken belief that we were making a matching gesture - and vaporises the British economy by mistake.

Sweet word

So it came as a relief to escape into Derby Cathedral on Saturday to speak at a concert in memory of Jeffery Tillett, whose death I noted on this page earlier this year. A local Conservative politician over many decades, former mayor, many times parliamentary candidate, patron of the arts and licensee of what was for many years Derby's only gay bar, Jeffery would have loved his concert, led by his surviving partner, Councillor Robin Wood.

Robin read Betjeman's heart-achingly understated poem, The Cockney Amorist. As he read the final lines...

I will not go to Finsbury Park

The putting course to see

Nor cross the crowded High Road

To Williamsons' to tea,

For these and all the other things

Were part of you and me.

I love you, oh my darling,

And what I can't make out

Is why since you have left me

I'm somehow still about.

... I was struck by the almost choking intensity that the word “darling” - though you would have thought it cheapened beyond recovery by overuse - still retains when spoken with passion. Most strong words become weakened by lazy repetition: “disaster”, “chaos”, “lovely”; but a few seem to have an inner integrity that keeps them honest. In the right circumstances, “my darling” really tightens the throat. Even a hapless Chancellor of the Exchequer, though he debauch all else, cannot spoil “darling” for us.

I looked it up in my OED. It's from “dear” (Old Teutonic), the “-ling” coming from Old English and Old Norse, and implying either a sense of belonging or a diminutive (duckling, Earthling, foundling, gosling). Its function is not unlike the Spanish -ito or -ita so beloved of the South Americans, for whom every domesticated little girl is a mamamita.

Dark thought

So I relay most affectionately a thought that occurred when, on Sky News on Sunday, I encountered Derek Draper. Once Peter Mandelson's sidekick and now working for Gordon Brown, he was denying point blank what we now know to be true: that his old master had “poured poison” on Mr Brown when talking to a top Tory. Derek, I thought, bids fair to become Downing Street's Princeling of Darkness.

Footnotes

A few more calculations: £250 billion, spread out on the ground in £5 notes, would yield an area 50 times the size of Iceland.

Times Recommends

• It’s the beginning of the affair
• Afghanistan: still a price worth paying
• Heroes of the downtrodden