Achilles – take 3

The ‘door-kick and stop’.

When occasionally carrying something bulky in the past, I thought it annoying that those posh stainless steel buttons with a wheelchair printed on it only feature on the ‘outside’ doors of Portland Square Building at Plymouth University, but that’s it. Inside, not a single door is ‘accessible’ and if you enter the building through the wrong door, you have to negotiate one of these veeery slooow open glass cage lifts to get up one level, to the ‘proper’ lifts.

Now I’m carrying myself on crutches through the building to get to my office on 5th floor, with four 4 heavy, self-closing doors in the way. Opening one of these requires just enough kick with the rubber stopper on the bottom of one crutch to swing it a little more than required, then quickly preventing the door from falling close with said rubber stopper, while getting ready to easy my way through with the help of the second crutch.

Never mind the door slamming after me, it should have been fitted with an opener…