N eighbours! No, I'm not going to burst into the introductory music of the sickly sweet Oz soap. It's the real ones that get to me. Are neighbours in cities and towns better or worse than those in villages? Are villages friendlier?

Well the answer has to be yes and no. I've asked around and it appears we've all had different experiences.

Neighbours can be good or bad, strangers or friends. They're the people in the house next door or across the street and just because they're physically close doesn't mean they're on the same planet. Some neighbours are simply pedantic or plain weird.

Good neighbours welcome you with open arms and a glass of something interesting when they see you on moving-in day. They might even supply you with lunch and a spare mattress if yours has got lost in the move.

The best I've heard of was when someone I know moved to France. They were welcomed with a hamper full of local cheese, butter, wine, fruit and bread plus a large bunch of flowers. They also received a kiss on each cheek.

Their neighbour was the local mayor and he was ecstatic to see that the tumble-down old cottages they'd bought were going to be renovated. The relationship between them all stood the test of time. They're still friends some 15 years later.

At the other end of the spectrum, I had friends who moved into a North Somerset cottage some years back where the natives – sorry, neighbours – were far from friendly.

An old right of way to their new neighbours' cottages passed tight up against my friends' kitchen window. It was old, cracked and downright dangerous. My new neighbours laid a new, wider path at the bottom of the garden. It was actually more convenient than the old one. Did the neighbours appreciate this? Did they hell!

The natives – sorry again, I mean neighbours – took umbrage to the fact that their path had been improved and moved to a more convenient spot, thus allowing my friends a tad more privacy in their kitchen. After all, my friends were young and full of vigour back in those days; lots of things were possible over the kitchen sink!

Even when my friends had a ton of gravel delivered and stacked beneath the kitchen window one old lady in particular insisted on using the path, clambering up over the gravel, puffing and wheezing and her feet sliding out from under her.

My friends also bought some land from British Rail that ranged along the bottom of their garden. The neighbours took umbrage to that, too, and insisted the land was theirs even though it was obviously not so. Stakes marked out by a surveyor for a boundary fence were torn from the ground.

My friend, not a man to cross if you had any sense, caught them at it. Lifting the pointed end of the stick he threatened that the next person he saw tearing out his fence post would end up with the pointy bit sticking out the top of their head. He didn't have any problems after that.

Some years past we had a neighbour who decided his acre of garden was a farm. He even bought a tractor. We lived in semi-detached bungalows and the the gardens were long and thin, so this made little practical sense.

It turned out he planned to move the fences over so he had more garden and we had less. He soon learned that we were not happy about this. Neither were we keen on having The Good Life in suburbia.

His kids didn't approve, either. They released the rabbits he was raising for the table. Lots of fluffy white bunnies were seen hopping away to meet and copulate with their wild counterparts.

My next home will be detached and without a neighbour for miles – unless they can walk on water!