City Living: Everybody needs good neighbours, but what happens when they won't leave you alone? Edel Morgan reports

I was recently in a taxi when the twentysomething driver told me he had just moved out of his new house and in with his parents because of the neighbour from hell.

This immediately conjured visions of relentless late night parties or intolerable anti-social behaviour.

But no, the reason he moved out was that this neighbour was too sociable by half.

At first it was nice to have a friendly neighbour but before long he was unable to approach his front gate in his car without this neighbour running out to greet him with a can of beer.

He would get up with the lark to wash his car so he wouldn't be disturbed but his eager neighbour would invariably emerge bleary eyed asking if he needed any help.

They shared a communal garden and during the summer the neighbour practically set up camp on the grass and would beckon him to join him.

If he didn't appear, he would knock on his door and in a mock 12-year-old's voice ask him "are you coming out to play?"

At night when he would arrive in late he could see a shadow hovering in the upstairs window next door.

The last straw came when a tradesman came to install floors while he was at work and his neighbour effectively invited himself in to inspect the work, staying for several hours.

It became abundantly clear to him he was virtually a prisoner in his own home and the only option was to clear out, even if it meant sleeping on his mother's couch.

He has subsequently rented his property out to two young female professionals and says that, if his neighbour moves out, he will consider returning one day.

The other extreme, which seems to be more prevalent these days, is the frosty neighbourhood syndrome where people don't acknowledge each other unless they've been formally introduced and, if required, would be unable to pick out the person two doors up in an identity parade.

At a recent residents' association meeting in my area, a man remarked that he was incredulous that when out walking his dog, few of the people he encountered would even say hello to him.

A woman commented it was a "very unfriendly neighbourhood" and said when her alarm went off one day while she was at work after thieves tried to get in her back door, no one made any effort to investigate or call the gardaí.

These days the common response to the relentless din of an alarm is to turn the TV up higher to drown out the noise.

In a large and populous neighbourhood where there are likely to be several alarms going off at once it is easy to become inured to the sound.

It makes sense to build good relations with at least a few neighbours if only to ensure your alarm isn't ignored, or you have someone to take your post in while on holiday but have we outgrown the era when we want to become so friendly with our neighbours that they can intrude on our privacy?

Is it selfish to want to cultivate relationships for our own end and then keep them at arm's length when it suits us?

"No" says Amy Ryan who lives in an upmarket residential area in Dublin's southside.

" I think it's a mutual thing whereby you keep an eye on their place while they're away and vice versa but it doesn't mean you have to be bosom buddies or socialise together. They are are not necessarily your friends, they just happen to be the people who bought the house next door."

Julia O'Neill and her husband know the price of getting too close to a neighbour. They built a house in their garden and, when it was near completion, caught a neighbour wandering around it uninvited after the door was left open by the builder.

She believes that, because they were on such familiar terms, the neighbour in question didn't think she was doing anything wrong.

News went around like wildfire on the neighbourhood "telegraph" and before long every fixture and fitting was common knowledge.

A few years previously, the same neighbourhood telegraph went into overdrive when their house was broken into.

Very little of value was taken and the burglar appears to have been caught short because he left a deposit in their back garden. Some months later she met a neighbour who said she was terribly sorry to hear about the disgusting mess that had been left on her brand new carpets.

The story took on several distortions before she eventually met another neighbour who after commiserating with her on her traumatic break in stated with a puzzled look: "What I can't figure out is how they got it on the ceiling?"