The other week a plate came sailing over our back fence.

It was a cardboard plate, and it didn’t hit anyone, so no harm done. I was happy to pass it back through the fence to the politely apologising neighbours enjoying their exuberant barbeque next door.

Living close by each other, as we do in Mt Vic, requires a bit of give and take. Kudos, for example, to the young people in the flat down the road who not only gave us advance warning of the party they were planning, but also invited us to it.

We’re lucky that all our current neighbours are a genial and respectful bunch, but it has not always been thus.

Once we had a group of young folk living next to us who were of the view that 4am was a perfect time to crank up the stereo and have loud drunken conversations on the front deck, which was approximately one metre from our bedroom window.

Unfortunately this coincided with the time our daughter was a baby and sleep was in short supply.

On one such occasion, I spent about an hour grinding and gnashing my teeth before getting out of bed and heading next door to let our neighbours know that people were actually trying to sleep.

Perhaps it said something about the state of the party but nobody acknowledged my arrival, despite me being noticeably older than them and wearing pyjamas.

I stood in their midst for some minutes wondering what to do, before – and it makes me cringe to think of it – clapping my hands like a school teacher.

Confused young people watched me attempt to deliver with some authority a speech about my need for sleep, possibly let down by the fact I was wearing a fluffy pink dressing gown.

The noise levels went down marginally, but a few short hours later, when the partygoers had gone to bed at last, our baby inevitably awoke. At that point I opened all the windows and made sure the bassinet and her loud hungry cries were strategically positioned near the open window.

Fortunately the days of formulating and executing acts of revenge on my neighbours are largely over.

Instead, I am happy to be part of a wider Mt Vic neighborhood WhatsApp group where people lend books, look after cats, water plants when people are on holiday, and chase down escaped dogs.

We should celebrate the fact that Mt Vic is a friendly place, with a healthy community of people who look out for each other.

As it happens, March is the month that Neighbours Aotearoa encourages people to get to know their neighbours. Great idea – I hope we remain the kind of community where you can accidentally biff a plate across the fence and know the neighbour will return it in good humour.