Well, I didn’t judge this guy but I got talking to him and he said it happened to him all the time. I was at a pub on the beach and I went outside to smoke and there was a guy on a bike, looking through the bin for bottles and cans. (Where I live, you get 10¢ back on drink bottles and cans if you return them to a recycling place and so a lot of itinerant people go around collecting them for extra cash.) I’d always been curious and so I asked the guy if he makes much money collecting bottles and cans because a lot of the people I’ve seen doing it are very organised and have special routes planned and everything. To begin with, he was a bit standoffish with me, like I was judging him, but I let him know that I wasn’t, and he told me his story. He’d had a white collar job - a teacher, I think - and not long after he retired, his wife died and he found himself sitting round the house, not knowing what to do with himself, so he bought a bike and started riding round collecting bottles and cans. He said he loved being outdoors, and the exercise and fresh air, and with the money he collected from the cans, he’d put disadvantaged children (somewhere in Africa) through school. The kind of children that normally wouldn’t have had a formal education if it wasn’t for him, or someone like him. He was wonderful to chat to - a really lovely man - and it’s sad to think of him being judged by people with all the good he’s doing. I think when it comes to judging - we’re all people, and everyone has their story - we could (and probably are) making broad assumptions with nothing but prejudices and preconceived ideas to back them up.