Anxiety Aunt: Help! My neighbour and I are at loggerheads over our boundary fence, how do we find a solution?

Dear Aunty, My neighbour and I used to have a fairly amicable relationship but lately we have been arguing over the colour of the new fence we need to erect along our shared boundary. She is something of a hippy and while that has never impacted me or bothered me in the past, she now says the charcoal colour I want for the fence will block the flow of energy in her garden or some other feng shui-based mumbo jumbo. She will only consider various shades of green for the fence whereas I want something more modern and contemporary and am open to various tones but green is very dated, I feel. Can you please advise how we move forward with this given we can’t seem to agree? Yours, De-fence-ive Dear De-fence-ive, One sees what you have done with your sign-off, my dear, very clever. But One does wonder does that mean your neighbour is on the off-fence-ive? And if you are casting your roles as such, where is the space for what you should really be doing, which is working toward a com-pro-mise. Your Aunt has said this many times and One will say it again, the key to living harmoniously is to avoid creating ongoing strife with your neighbours. One knows it isn’t always easy, One lives next door to Bert Saunders for goodness’ sake, so One is well aware that sometimes neighbours can get on every single one of your nerves. But sometimes you either have to turn a blind eye and try not to let their behaviour, quirks or annoying habits get to you, or you must learn to compromise. Of course, it is your Aunt that does all the compromising in One’s relationship with Bert. One must pander to his moods, deal with his neurosis and hypochondria, not to mention his apparent inability to ever pay his own way. Readers may wonder what your Aunt gets out of this friendship and One often wonders that Oneself. But Bert does listen to your Aunt’s stories, which can get a bit repetitive at times, he also laughs at every one of your Aunt’s jokes, which, come to think of it, do also get recycled fairly regularly. The truth is your Aunt is a fickle creature and is easily won over by a bit of wide-eyed adoration. So while Bert loves to show off his latest bout of Athlete’s foot, comes armed with only ice cubes for veranda gin sessions and can be overly huffy and jealous, particularly when a certain postie pops over for tea and, um, crumpets, One must admit One would be rather lonely without him. So, while your neighbour and you may currently be at loggerheads over the fence, One would urge you to find a solution and quickly, before you do irreparable damage to your relationship. One would suggest you sit down for a powwow with your neighbour and go through the range of optional fence colours, sorting into piles that you love, hate or are indifferent about. (Would you listen to your Aunt sounding like a regular Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen sans shoulder pads and garish three-piece suit!). Remove all the ones you both hate then repeat the process being harsher with the optional colours and the ones you love and she hates and vice versa. Keep whittling the options down until you have a handful of colours you can both live with then make the final choice. And if it happens that colour is some shade of green, just remember there are multiple ways to conceal a fence using plants, trees or decorative screens. History shows that human beings have gone to work over a whole host of things over the years, some valid, some not so much, and quite often related to boundaries but there is no need to be drawing pistols at dawn over a shared fence. Get together, be mature and work it out. Best of luck.