Daniel Hutchinson From The Hutch

Learning to live with your neighbours isn’t always easy but some people seem to find it harder than others.

Our feature on page six and seven today is a good example of this. Hundreds of people have been having thigh slapping, leg pumping, God-praising fun, complete with loud music at the Greerton Hall.

One neighbour however, is not having fun at all, and their 82 noise complaints have sent the Zumba classes and church worship sessions packing from the Greerton Community Hall.

While I think it’s important that people respect other people’s right to enjoy a good night’s sleep and respite from constant noise, there does need to be places in every community where people can come together and make a bit of noise.

This community hall hasn’t popped up overnight and it seems patently unfair that one person – and an anonymous one at that – can dictate terms to a community and there is absolutely no debate or mediation.

Choose wisely

You really need to do your due diligence before choosing a place to live, and, as someone who has moved no fewer than 28 times, I know this better than most.

My wife, who is very much an urban person, has one main rule when buying a house – there can be no horses tethered in the neighbourhood. If she sees a horse, we are clearly too close to the country and not close enough to the shops and other facilities.

This stems from when we lived in a small settlement in Cloudy Bay, in Marlborough. What could be more idyllic than living by the coast, just a stone’s throw from the vineyards? The sort of place you can ride a horse down the road if you are that way inclined.

This was a mistake, because every spring, on every frosty morning, well before the Sun has risen, 50 or 100 helicopters would make their way across the Cook Straight, single out our house as some sort of navigation beacon and fly directly over it. It turns out that helicopters are the main frost fighting tool for vineyards.

Vineyards also attract mice – lots and lots of mice – and thousands of birds when the berries start to ripen. It turns out the best way to scare birds is to set off loud explosions at random intervals, so the birds never get used to the pattern.

That scares birds but it sure does rile up the humans too!

Reading the signs

So now, like a lot of people, I pay particular attention to the neighbourhood. I do my homework and keep an eye out for tell-tale signs of trouble – like horses.

A community centre next door seems like a fairly obvious sign of trouble if you are sensitive to noise.

My advice to prospective house buyers or tenants is to look at the signs stuck to the windows out the front and see who uses it. There is a big decibel difference between a yoga class and a Zumba session.

If you like peace and quiet, coffee and croissants on a Sunday morning, probably best you don’t move next door to an American-style Protestant church because the gospel music will drive you to drink.

Also, if a real estate agent asks you if you like an “active view” they are basically saying the house is next door to a gang pad.

Gang activity can usually be screened out with some clever landscaping and dense evergreens. I once obscured my patched neighbours with a two metre fence. This involved going onto their side of the fence to nail in the palings. While this is good fence building etiquette it was a little awkward. ‘Do you mind if I come over and finish building my barrier?’ They were cool with it though. It turns out these guys love fences and we both valued our privacy for various reasons.

Put a face to the fracas

And that’s half the battle – talk things through. Sometimes when problems become human beings with faces and personalities, it doesn’t seem like as much of a problem.

Usually it is the smells, noises and sights that bother us, rather than the people. Left unresolved, these things fester away. Little problems become big problems. A little bit of compromise and common sense goes a long way.

Do your homework before you buy that house. Talk to the neighbours, drive around the neighbourhood. Smell the breeze. That way you won’t have to steal a digger and destroy the neighbour’s tree because it obscures your view of the Mount, or lob a brick onto the neighbour’s roof because they’re burning rubbish or stab the tyres on the lad’s car next door because he’s a noisy little fella who likes to do burn-outs.

And keep an eye out for horses.

daniel@thesun.co.nz