SO you want to annoy the neighbours? Might I suggest net curtains, which are a pox on any residential landscape, yet still hang in their millions around Britain (and, tragically, Oxford).

The question is, why would any half-intelligent individual who washes regularly and generally exhibits a certain pride in their appearance, insist on hanging these vile leftovers from the 1950s in their living and bedroom windows?

Personally – and I’ve no evidence to support this theory you understand – I believe it’s mainly those with severe psychotic/psyopathic tendencies who probably favour them. After all, if you’re into murder, especially residential slaughter, don’t net curtains provide the perfect cover, allowing you to peek out for any sign of the police, while simultaneously casting an impenetrable cowl over your dastardly deed?

But even if crime is not the main reason for suspecting those who still champion this style of window dressing, hand on heart, how many net curtains have you ever seen that are actually white? Or whiter-than-white?

They always seem to be rife with mildew or the kind of stain that’s rather vague and pale but nevertheless unpleasant.

In fact, they always remind me of ageing aunts who probably don’t smell too good, cutting you slices of fruit cake, the Best Before date of which doubtless expired some years before.

Or Christmases when something bad happened. Or summer holidays when it rained. Heck, throw in a copy of The Carpenters and, frankly, all I want to do is cry.

Indeed, I now find them so unsettling, I can’t even step over the ‘Welcome’ mat of someone’s front door if I spot netties in their windows.

Certainly for all the reasons listed above, but also because net curtains spell ‘gloom’, and I challenge anyone to feel cheerful after spending time in a room where bright daylight has been filtered out.

I am convinced – and again, there is no reliable evidence to support this theory – that if the Home Secretary made it an illegal offence to display net curtains before the hour of 9pm, the number of people suffering from depression would significantly fall in this country.

And if you don’t believe me, take this test. Sit for 15 minutes, during daylight hours, in a room with no net curtains, and then sit in a similar room for the exact same length of time, which has.

I’ll bet that 30 minutes later you you’ll need the services of a professional counsellor, and want to move to somewhere like Alaska where, during the summer months, it’s daylight 24:7.

So I guess what I’m trying to do here is start a campaign to see net curtains stripped from every house in the land. God knows there are plenty of alternatives if you really don’t want strangers peering in. There are blinds and shutters, or you could just fill in the holes with bricks (though that’ll only attract squatters).

But in this day and age, no one need suffer the curse of netties. So let’s put a stop to this scar on the urban milieu, and together say ‘Curtains’ to Netties.