Is it OK to return my neighbour’s cigarette butts to his side of the fence?

Our neighbour flicks cigarette butts over our shared fence like it’s an ashtray. I gather them up and discreetly return them over the fence. Should I say something?

B.B., Werribee, VIC

A: There was a guy who lived in the house next to mine and he did the same thing. Every day, about 10 times a day, he’d stand right up against the fence and smoke a joint for about two minutes, then cough for about 25. And not a polite, Noel Coward-esque throat-clearing ahem-cough. This was an emphysemic, seismic, acchh-achhhhhhh-ACHHHHHHING-ing that built up and up until I worried he was going to have a respiratory explosion and bits of charred lung-confetti were going to flutter over the fence and get all over my washing.

He also threw his butts over the fence, but I never threw them back over: I quietly gathered them up and put them in the bin because I figured that anyone who had the gall to throw butts over a neighbour’s fence would also have the gall to smack that neighbour round the head with a broken fence paling. Though there was this one time when he was out there coughing and I was out there taking down the washing (just in case) and I worked up the guts to say, “Excuse me, could you not throw your butts over the fence? My wife thinks I’m a secret smoker, ha-ha-ha-ha” and he chuckled, which turned into a chuckle-cough, then he said, “Sure thing, mate” and stopped doing it.

That worked, so maybe a polite, cheeky, over-the-fence neighbour-request is the way to go here because you don’t want to get into an ongoing, back-and-forth game of tossed-butt fence-tennis. You can never win with a smoker. They’re the server; they’ll always have the advantage.

guru@goodweekend.com.au

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