The crates on the walkway

In an old covered souq in Muscat, some of the shopkeepers stack their crates and stands out into the walkway, a little further each year.

Everyone can see that the passage has narrowed. Hardly anything changes. It is worth asking why, because the same shape turns up whenever someone wants a habit to end.

Some people do well from the way things are. The shopkeepers with the most stock in the aisle get the most eyes on it. They have built their display, and their day, around that space.

Others are not profiting at all; they simply do not want the bother. Moving everything back means new shelves, a quarrel with the neighbours, a week of disruption. They would rather leave it.

Then there is the largest group by far: the shoppers who drift through, step around a crate, and think nothing of it.

And there are the people the narrow walkway actually hurts. The father with a pushchair who turns back halfway. The older woman with a stick. The man in a wheelchair who stopped coming years ago.

Those last people usually try to argue it out with the first, and it goes nowhere. The shopkeepers who gain from the crates are not confused about the crates. No argument will move them.

What moves things is the drifting middle. The day ordinary shoppers start noticing the pushchair that cannot pass, mentioning it, choosing the shops with a clear front, they stop being neutral. Now the complaint has two groups behind it instead of one, and the people who only wanted a quiet life find that a quiet life means clearing the aisle.

Change looks like persuading the powerful. Mostly it is the patient recruitment of people who did not care.