NEIGHBOURS, everybody needs good neighbours. Just a friendly word each morning, helps to make a better day. Neighbours, should be there for one another, next door is only a footstep away.

Remember the corny tune? Remember the sickly smiles, everybody in each other's houses... and the bickering and backbiting?

Neighbours can make or break your life. Good neighbours are, quite literally, worth their weight in gold because they can bring up the price of your property.

House-hunters these days are paying investigators to stake out a property and interview the neighbours to find out if they are likely to induce misery.

Bad neighbours can destroy your happiness, make you ill and create an upside down world where the workplace is your haven and going home brings on nausea and cold, clammy sweats.

It could start with something apparently harmless, such as lopping off the neighbour's branches hanging into your garden. It could be the erection of a conservatory that cuts out their light. It may be loud music thumping through the walls late into the night, or the radio blaring out while they are cleaning the car early on a Sunday morning.

Neighbours have been stabbed to death for doing a bit of noisy DIY drilling or hammering after 10pm.

It may be their children causing the problems. One colleague is moving house because the youngsters down her street are so noisy she can stand it no more.

Last week I overheard other colleagues scouring the Property Press, looking at homes for sale and being put off certain streets because "there are children down there".

I live in a village with very few children. It was not until my neighbours had a daughter I realised that what had been missing was the lovely tinkle of a little child's laughter over the garden fence.

In my former home, I was blessed with the best neighbour ever put on this earth. When I was widowed with a nine-year-old daughter, the woman next door saved our lives. In the few years I had lived there, we had exchanged only a few friendly words over the garden fence. When my wife died, my neighbour made it her mission in life to ease our plight.

I would hang out the washing before work and if it rained I would get home to find everything neatly folded on the kitchen table. If I left it there long enough, I would find it ironed.

When I changed jobs and had to start work before the crack of dawn, my daughter would go next door every evening with her teddy and pyjamas and sleep the night. In the morning she was dressed and taken to school. If she was ill at school - and it just happened my neighbour was the school secretary - she would take my daughter home and look after her until I finished work.

On the other hand, I once had a pervert neighbour who lived in the dormer bungalow adjoining ours. We discovered he had an unfortunate habit of climbing out of his bedroom window, along the roof and peering through a crack in our curtains at bedtime. After I reported him to the police - who needed proof - and spread the tale around the village, For Sale signs appeared next door and he and his long-suffering family were gone.

Even the most mild-mannered of people can become evil in a neighbours dispute. One of my friends - an easy-going bloke - does not speak to his neighbour because of a planning wrangle some years ago.

He got wind last weekend that his neighbour was planning a barbecue. "I'm going to wait until it starts then I'm going out with my power washer. It's big, noisy and it might accidentally spray on their charcoal," he confided.

If you are at daggers drawn with your neighbours, the littlest of things take on extraordinary proportions. The noise of their lawnmower, their TV slightly loud through paper-thin walls, parking a few inches over "your" pavement. You resent their new car, ridicule his wife's new outfit, and 'shoo' their kids from your gate.

When your garden becomes a battle zone and the enemy is just across the boundary fence, where do you go for peace of mind - apart from work?

PS: My thanks to reader (ex-reader?) B Emmerson for his comments on last week's column about political correctness. He sent me a stark email saying simply: "I expect you are a Ron Atkinson supporter as well." Perhaps Mr Emmerson missed the point.

Updated: 10:49 Tuesday, May 18, 2004