The 94-year-old woman I've taken under my wings since I met her two months ago uses a stick, which is common for her age group.
She can only hold on to her walking stick or handrails with her right hand, as a car accident a while back had hit her on the left side, leaving her not only with pain in her left shoulder and arm, but also no strength in that hand to grip handrails for support. So, she has to have the handrails on her right side when she goes up or down steps (at Tube stations, e.g.).
I've been telling her over the last eight weeks to make people walk around her, rather than her walking around / giving way to people, because just one tiny little trip-up, especially on a flight of steps, can be disastrous.
The injury itself will be bad enough, but for a 94-year-old especially, it might have nasty consequences, such as injuries to her eyes or teeth. (As it is, she already has precious few teeth left. She's been telling everyone about her being unable to eat all sorts of things, with so few teeth left.)
It is through looking after her the last two months that I've learned to walk behind or ahead of her when going up / down steps (e.g., at Tube stations), to catch her or break her fall should she trip up, something I'd never had to do before, as I'd never looked after someone so old.
It is also through looking after her (accompanying her home on the Tube after the soup kitchen meals at various sites, carrying her takeaway boxes of surplus cooked food and the goodies bags handed out) that I've become assertive on her behalf, actively asking people to give up their seats. (To their credit, a lot of them do, without having to be approached. One positive outcome of looking obviously old...)
At her station, we would wait until the disgorged passengers had all gone down the steps to the ticket turnstiles, before venturing down ourselves.
However, there are often also crowds of people coming up the steps to the platform to catch the train. This is when she then leaves the handrail to avoid the upstream flow, which gives me kittens every time.
Whenever I issue yet another reminder, her answer is, now, "Old habit."
Her answer used to be that her stopping mid-path and standing still (on the pavement, say) didn't make people walk around her. She said they simply barged into her -- not deliberately, I'm sure, just not being more mindful of old people.
(London, 2026)
