No country for old (wo)men

Time for an entry to the blog, after another very long pause.

It is very inconvenient when you lose a bespoke walking-stick. Even if losing things is something that you are very good at. And so, when I heard that my wife's mother (call her Dorothy) had lost hers, and being a dutiful son-in-law, I offered to take her to buy a replacement. She had, after all, gone to the trouble of finding out that her local supplier of such things no longer stocked "her brand", but that a similar establishment in a different, though nearby, part of the city, did.
I duly picked up Dorothy on the appointed morning, and drove her to Canton. Don't be alarmed, it was not a long journey, for that is merely the name of the suburb where the stick-purveyor was to be found. Thinking about it for a moment, though, and with the undoubted benefit of hind-sight, the whole coming experience was to resemble being press-ganged or Shanghaied.
I parked the car in the spacious and usefully sign-posted "Customer's car park" a little nervously. There was another car already standing in a space and, if its driver was, in fact, a customer, then, morally at least, I would be double-parked.
There was a back entrance to the shop from the car park. It was a small, battered metal door with one of those fish-eye peepholes that you encounter in a certain sort of hotel. There was a bell-push. A sign told us to "Push for assistance". I pushed. I am an aficionado of the kind of film where pushing a bell like that triggers a long period in which one hears, ever more clearly, a limping tread and a dragging foot that herald the approach of a hooded and hump-backed Igor. And so I stepped well back. Dorothy, who does not watch films, has no such prejudices, and so she held her ground close to the door. This was a little unfortunate because it opened outwards and so, for a moment, she disappeared from view and I was left to face the denizen of the shop alone. Hooded and hunch-backed only metaphorically, it was a female, and she eyed me, an apparently healthy middle-aged man, with suspicion. I hastily reached my wife's mother out from behind the door and stood behind her, beaming as conciliatory a smile as I could muster, and pushed her forward.
"She wants a stick." I said.
"Indeed." the female snorted. "This way."
And she melted into the darkness of the shop.
It smelled a little damp inside, and the carpeted floor felt unaccountably "sticky" as we walked along a short corridor into the showroom. Here, in a large, low-ceilinged chamber, all manner of "living-aids" were ranged about, displayed on walls and shelves and on the dubious floor itself.
Some I recognised: wheelchairs, powered and otherwise; walking-frames; commodes; and bathroom aids. Others were strange to me, and I kept close to Dorothy for fear of them. On one shelf, soft bundles, faintly phosphorescent, and reminiscent of fungoid growths, bore the inscription "Foam Ring Cushions". Nearby, "Luxury Stocking Aids" cunningly twisted into a chthonic tower, of unfamiliar and nauseous geometry, cast an eldritch shadow in the wan light of the shop's fluorescent fittings.
The sticks, such as they were, cowered in a corner, far from the light, and the denizen, smiling at the prospect of a conquest, waved her hand expansively,
"Many sticks. Choose."
My wife's mother, as I've said, is not party to the protocols of the horror and mystery genres and, unaffected by that which she could not, therefore, perceive, dealt the "assistant" a blow that was as effective as a crucifix in a crypt,
"Which are the cheapest ones?" she asked.
There followed an extended cosmic battle between the forces of light and reason and the armies of chaos. I merely watched, trembling, as the "Igor" fawned over the qualities of the most expensively crafted sticks on the stand.
"Look," she said, "how they fold. See, see the pretty flowers on the stock."
"Too heavy," Dorothy snapped back.
"Feel the handle, it is orthopaedic."
With a delight that was not quite healthy, the denizen stroked a horrid, weirdly carved lump atop one of the sticks.
"I want a simple handle," my wife's mother countered, "and, besides, they're all too tall."
The denizen winced, and cast a sideways glance towards the till.
"Can you cut them to size? The man who sold me my last one could."
The Igor ket out a strangled,
"N-no."
Defeat.
The denizen betrayed it in every gesture. One shoulder raised higher than the other, an eye twitching, she acknowledged the greater skill of her adversary and led us to the door regretfully.
As we approached it, I heard a malicious giggle and then,
"I know a man who sells sticks. In the market, in the CENTRE of the town. He might help."
Snatching meagre comfort from abject defeat, the female leered in my direction and, as she heard Drothy ask, rhetorically, "Will you be able to park near the market?", she smiled and closed the door upon us.