A couple of weeks ago I found myself deep in the Cotswolds. Two middle-aged neighbouring couples on a very pleasant estate of modernish detached houses had fallen out over the exact position of the legal boundary. There were the usual allegations of an encroaching extension, a wrongly positioned replacement fence and over-hanging guttering. The mediation bundle contained the inevitable documents: office copies of each registered title with filed OS plans, ancient conveyances with crayon-coloured drawings, scores of poorly copied photographs of the site before, during and after erection of the offending structures, numerous meticulously prepared land survey drawings with ingenious transparent overlays together with accompanying surveyors’ reports expressing great confidence in perfectly opposite opinions, letters from neighbours and previous owners, aerial photographs of various vintages, counsel-drafted pleadings bandying trespass, nuisance, encroachment, obstruction, verbal abuse, threatened assault, damages and interest. Court approved costs budgets for eye-watering sums, most of which had already been spent. Oh, and funding notices indicating legal expenses insurance on each side – generally a most unwelcome additional obstacle to settlement and the bane of the mediator’s professional life (think late afternoon, settlement in principle…and a wrecking ball delivered by telephone from an insurance company).