MY faith in human nature has been restored, and it’s all thanks to things that go bump in the night.

In this column, a few weeks ago, I recounted the story of how our car had been randomly sprayed by a vandal while parked outside our house overnight.

Worse things happen at sea (as our mum always used to say), but it was disappointing to think that some people get their kicks out of inflicting unnecessary inconvenience on innocent people they’ve never met.

Then, a few days ago, my daughter woke up to find her car had also been involved in an overnight incident, while parked outside our neighbour’s house, just down the road.

She got in it to drive to work and found a note underneath the windscreen wiper.

“Sorry,” it said, and directed us to phone a mobile number.

She had a quick look round the car to see what anybody might have to be sorry about, but found nothing and, because she was in a hurry, went off to work.

After work she showed the note to us, and we also guessed somebody must have bumped into it, but couldn’t find anything wrong.

I even drove the car around the block, to make sure it was driving properly, but everything was fine.

By now it was too late to phone, so my wife took the scrap of paper to work the next day and phoned the mystery number in her dinner hour.

It turned out to belong to the neighbour whose house the car had been parked outside. We know a few of our neighbours, but had never spoken to this one before.

He confessed to rolling into our car while reversing, apparently causing some minor damage to the bumper.

But here’s the embarrassing bit: the car is like us. It’s getting on a bit, so it has a few bumps and scars, here and there, and it is impossible to tell which damage is new, if any, and which is historical.

Before my daughter ever got behind the wheel, the car had belonged to my son, and the scratches down the side and the bent wheel arch were from his ownership – although, to be fair, they were from an accident in which he was only partially to blame.

As for the rest of its wounds, we can’t quite remember who was responsible for them, but they are evidence that cars usually come off worst in collisions with gates and gateposts.

So my wife told our kindly neighbour not to worry, and thanked him for being so honest.

Not at all, he said. He had felt a moral obligation to own up to it.

That made our day, and our own casual approach to the whole thing seemed to make his day, too.

Moral obligation or not, it was a risky thing for him to do, because some unscrupulous people owning an old car with a few dents might think they had hit the jackpot if somebody offered to pay for damage they thought they had caused.

But not us – which must be especially pleasing for those who have to live in the same street as us.

I may have been exaggerating when I said the incident restored my faith in human nature, because you only have to switch on the news to despair again. But – and as unlikely as it may seem – there are still plenty of people who do feel moral obligations, and that’s refreshing.

If only we could arrange for everybody to have inconsequential but morale-boosting little bumps in the night, then we would all sleep a little happier in our beds.