Fordyce Maxwell: I foresee a future as one of those unfortunates rummaging in litter bins

ONE of the fine dividing lines we tread frequently is between wanting to help with a problem and seeming nosy.

Another is the danger of what started as an interesting hobby slipping into full-time obsession. (Honestly, I’m not that dedicated a gardener). Then there’s the line between giving advice and preaching, the difference between knowing the answer and being a smart-arse, or the extremely fine line between admitting a mistake and seeming incompetent.

There are many more. My immediate problem is that I’ve added picking up litter to my list, and now worry about moving on from picking up rubbish and binning it to finding it useful. On bad days I foresee a future as one of those unfortunates with whiskers and oilskin hat, indescribable coat and wellingtons, festooned with plastic bags, rummaging in litter bins rather than filling them.

As these things do, my litter picking began in a modest way by clearing the occasional empty fast-food package, beer bottle or coffee carton stuck in the front hedge or lobbed over it by those too tired, and possibly emotional, to carry them home.

I picked up that litter in the same resigned way I take a shovel to clear dog crap from the front gate or our stretch of pavement. I don’t want to and resent having to, but like the alternative even less.

Last winter’s snow made me think harder about doing a bit more. If everyone had cleared their own stretch of pavement, life would have been easier for all, the dividing line being between social good and looking a mug with the only cleared stretch of pavement on the street.

Undeterred, I began to extend litter-picking from our garden to the street, or at least that part of it I walk regularly. I felt self-conscious at first about picking up a crisp packet, plastic bag or fizzy drink bottle and carrying them as far as the bin at the bottom of the road or my own wheelie bin.

But that wore off and the occasional sidelong look of askance no longer worries me. It’s not much of a bit, but I’m doing it. The dividing line I’m trying to avoid is the one between muttering about litter droppers and ignorant dog-owners and what I might do if I catch one of them at it.

As happened to a friend whose early doorstep milk delivery was often drunk and the bottle left lying. He fitted a CCTV and identified the culprit to the police – who told him they couldn’t take action. He told me regretfully: “I shud just have beetled him and stuck the bottle up his jacksie.”

I sympathise, but that’s a dividing line I’m trying not to cross.