Mad mothers, City whizkids - no one halts for the lame - News

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A crutch, I have discovered, is invisible to all but the lame man whom it supports. I had hoped that it would signal my present fragility, a crumbling and distorted spine that disrupts the message-pathway from brain to limbs. Not so, however. I can see it well enough and feel the comfort of it too in the strength it gives to hand and arm. But to others it simply is not there. At first absurdly self-conscious, when I at last got used to it, I ventured into the City, bidden to lunch with a kindly plutocrat. He, I imagine, is delivered to his office by Rolls or Bentley, but I took the District and Circle lines to Liverpool Street and limped.

Debating the labour of which is more difficult to negotiate, I lost count of the stairs up and down, and scurrying men and women on them, a third of my age, expected me - though I thought the crutch and its implications pretty obvious - to give way and let them pass. I then found that the City's streets at lunchtime are places of madness, mayhem and such grim and singular intent that all are blind to everything but the objective of the moment.

The motorist gives the crutched limper not even the fraction of another second in which to complete his crossing, but threatens onslaught with front bumper, hooting horn and revving engine. No pedestrian steers clear of the man with a crutch, they kick it from under him, shoulder him as they pass, spin him round and stride on oblivious (I do not much exaggerate). And the City police do not know Houndsditch (no such place, they said) from Shoreditch.

Away from the City there are menaces far worse than these - the women with pushchairs full of brats. The wheels of their buggies snatch the cripple's crutch and those who push them ram his ankles, fell and trample him. These too fecund creatures believe that their very fecundity gives them inexorable right of way in every circumstance, and it is a right that they assert with the implacability of Boudicca reborn. Only the woman with a double-buggy and a mobile phone is a threat more grave, though women with shopping trolleys in a Sainsbury's hypermarket run them close.

As for travelling on the District line when Wimbledon is in season, I have only myself to blame; it had, nevertheless, occurred to me that some gentlemanly young soul might surrender his seat. Not so, again. Not even one of the narrowshouldered seats for which the halt, lame and pregnant, according to the label, may claim priority, was offered me, and the only words spoken were "Bloody thing", from a six-foot lout who tripped over the crutch when he got on at Earl's Court.

At my age things can only get worse. I'd better get used to it.