October
The people you see every week
You already see these people. The person two doors down, whoever started at work last month, the one who serves you every Thursday and whose name you have never asked. Proximity is not the same as knowing somebody, and the gap between them is where most of this month sits.
None of it needs a free afternoon or a difficult conversation. Most of it is noticing something you were already looking at, and then saying one sentence about it.
Say plainly that you are glad they came
Anyone new spends months privately unsure whether they are wanted or merely tolerated. One sentence settles it.
Plan someone's first week, not their first day
Onboarding is concentrated in day one, which is the day nobody retains anything.
Learn to say their name properly
People with unfamiliar names spend their lives being mispronounced and told it does not matter.
Explain how the system here actually works
Registering with a doctor, council tax, school places. Obvious to you, opaque and consequential to a newcomer.
Explain the rule nobody writes down
Every workplace, school and country runs on conventions that insiders cannot see and newcomers cannot guess.
Be a reliable adult for a child who is not yours
Every resilient childhood account includes at least one adult outside the family who was consistently there.
Warn someone what the phrase actually means
'We should do this again sometime' means different things in different places, and getting it wrong is painful.
Sit with whoever started this week
New starters eat alone for longer than anyone realizes, and decide how they feel about a place in the first fortnight.
Invite the new family twice
The first invitation is often declined out of uncertainty. The second is the one that establishes it was real.
Ask someone to teach you their food
Being asked to share something from home reverses the usual direction, where the newcomer receives and thanks.
Keep including the person whose language it is not
Groups drift back into the majority language within minutes, and the one person left out never says anything.
Become a regular somewhere on purpose
Being known by name in one place is the cheapest antidote there is to feeling like a stranger where you live.
Bring the new person into the group conversation
A circle of people talking is physically closed. Turning your body is the whole mechanism for opening it.
Check the venue before you invite someone
Asking a disabled friend to check whether somewhere works puts the whole job on the person it affects.
Hand over your good tradesperson
The reliable plumber, the honest garage, the dentist taking patients. Newcomers pay a premium for not knowing.
Ask an older person to teach you something
Being useful is the thing most often lost in older age. Being taught is a better gift than being helped.
Ask before you help, then do what they say
Grabbing a wheelchair or an arm without asking is both dangerous and startlingly common.
Leave the accessible toilet alone
It is not the spare one when there is a queue. For some people it is the only one in the building.
Never park across a dropped curb
A car over a dropped curb can strand a wheelchair user on the wrong side of a road with no other crossing.
Caption the video you posted
Captions serve deaf viewers, people in loud places, and anyone watching with the sound off — which is most people.
Move your bin off the pavement
Bins, bikes and parked cars narrow pavements to the point where a wheelchair has to go into the road.
Move your trolley out of the aisle
A blocked aisle is an inconvenience to most people and an impassable wall to a wheelchair or a scooter.
Step aside early on a narrow pavement
Whoever moves first is usually whoever is least able to. Deciding to be the one who moves is free.
Write down whether a place was actually accessible
Step-free claims are frequently wrong, and disabled people plan whole days around information nobody has verified.
Add alt text to your images
An image without a description is a blank space to anyone using a screen reader. Writing one takes twenty seconds.
Learn five signs and use them
Hello, thank you, sorry, please, your name. Five signs is enough to change an encounter completely.
Offer to put it in writing
Spoken instructions vanish. For anyone with hearing loss, dyslexia or brain fog they may not have landed at all.
Put it back exactly where it was
In the home of a blind or partially sighted person, a tidied object is a lost object.
Ask again the person who always says no
People who decline every invitation are usually not uninterested. Often they are waiting to be asked a fourth time.
Ask an older person what they used to do
Retired people are asked about their health and their grandchildren. Almost nobody asks what they were good at.
Clear the drain outside someone else's house
Ten minutes with a rake in autumn is the difference between a puddle and a flooded front room in the next heavy rain.
Every one of these is in the library, with the reason it lands and how long it takes.